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Chapter Text

The faint sound of glass breaking and the fearful gasp that Toto had made were his first sign that the situation had gone horribly out of control without him noticing.  He could hear Toto scrambling on the other side of the line, moving through his apartment. Ron, regretfully, realized he had no clue what the layout of the place was and wished desperately that at some point in the past he had made a point to visit Toto's so if something like this happened he would at least have had an idea of what he was looking at. 

But I haven't, have I? 

"What was that Toto?"

The sentence had pushed itself out of his mouth entirely of it's own volition. The vice grip of panic around his chest was tightening with every second that passed without knowing what he was hearing on the other side of the phone.  At some point he had sat up. He didn't remember sitting up. Maybe he had been since he'd started the call with Toto.  There was a buzzing noise in his ears.

Toto's indignant tone came through the phone "Somebody broke the glass in my rear window!"

"What'd you say?" His voice didn't sound like his own as another sentence came out, once again out of his control.

And then Toto spoke more quietly "... has the World Detective Alliance... really gone this far?"  It was the voice he used when he didn't realize that he was talking out loud.

The line went quiet, the only thing he could hear was Toto's rapid breathing. 

What is going on? 

His throat felt tight, somehow worse than it had after the surgery to repair his vocal cords.  The room seemed to be going dark around the edges.  He was trying desperately not to think about what had happened last time someone had gone after Toto without him there.  His fingers toyed with the lower edge of the bandages around his neck and then dropped back into his lap in a fist. 

It's too quiet. He heard Toto's breathing slow down somewhat. 

"Are you okay Toto?" He hoped that he didn't sound as shaky as he felt. 

Toto didn't reply. 

Ron began to regret every single time that he had gotten frustrated with Toto for unknowingly broadcasting what he was thinking to everyone present at a crime scene.  He would give everything that was his to have an idea of what was running through Toto's head right now. 

His teeth were chattering in a way that made it impossible to form another sentence. He could feel the phantom pitch and roll of waves tossing a ship, the overlapping voices of a panicked crowd of passengers, the dry heat of stage lights overhead. Pure unadulterated fear.

The leather couch under him and store lights above his head faded from his awareness. Salty, humid air, the burning light of the sun with no clouds in the sky, the smooth cool deck of a ship under one hand and something warm and horrible and dark red leaking out from where his other hand was pressed. Breath catching in his throat, cold sweat and tears mingling on his face, ears ringing as if a gun had just gone off.

"Ron..." Toto whispered, something akin to amazement in his voice, "We have backup!"

Toto's voice cut through the scene he had been reliving and he was pulled back to awareness, still on the couch in the back room of Toto's uncle's second hand store. Toto sounded, for all intents and purposes, unharmed on the other end of the phone.  

A wave of exhaustion hit him, somehow even stronger than the one he had after the second dose of veterinary-grade tranquilizers he'd taken earlier. He wanted Toto to keep talking, to tell him what he meant by backup while he laid back on the couch and listened while his heartbeat slowed back down.  That was a lie. Ron wanted Toto there, alive and safe, his body making an indent in the couch, the grounding feeling of Toto's thigh to the back of his head while he looked up at those wide eyes as Toto explained what had happened.  

He laid back, vaguely aware that Toto seemed to be talking again, he couldn't keep up with what was being said.  His eyes were heavy and Toto was safe.  He fell asleep.

Chapter Text

The light coming in through the large windows had disappeared by the time Ron's eyes opened again.  The second-hand store was dark and felt unsettlingly empty.  A hollowed out feeling sat in Ron's chest...

Strange.  

Had the tranquilizers left it once they had worked their way out of his system?  It couldn't have been very long ago that he'd trusted Toto to be his eyes and ears at the second crime scene of the day. But it was dark out now, the afternoon gone.  

Did I mess up the dosage?  

He sat up, reached for his phone and was struck by a sense of deja-vu before he remembered the prior phone call, the breaking glass and the ... backup?. 

What had Toto meant by backup?

How long has it been since I dropped asleep on the couch? 

The screen was too bright when he switched it on and the battery was running low.  He plugged in the phone and opened the call log. "Toto 50:48"  Their conversation hadn't been that long earlier.

How long had Toto gone on talking before he realized I wasn't there?

He called Toto.

The line rang three times before the call connected, there was a rustling noise and then Toto's voice came through "Hello? Isshiki speaking." Ron wanted to laugh at that, Toto's 'work voice' had come out even though the man must have just rolled out of a dead sleep.

"Toto" 

"Oh. Ron!." the work voice dropped away immediately and Ron could hear the sleepiness that Toto had been hiding a minute ago. "You're back! Where'd you go earlier? You didn't want to come see our backup so bad that you used another tranquilizer did you?" 

A stifled yawn came from the other side of the phone.

"I'm not even sure what you mean by backup!" Ron hated being as confused as he was right now and the desperation to know what was going on was starting to leak into his voice. "It can't be Spitz!  Who else do we have left? You wouldn't be this excited if it were Elmer." 

"Hm-" Toto made a quickly cut off grumble.  Isshiki didn't actually get angry at Ron often, but Ron had the feeling that Toto might be getting there now.

"I-, forget I said that... Please."  

There has to be something wrong with me today.  When have I actually gone after one of Toto's weak points like that?  

"I'm sorry." Ron hated the Detective's Alliance very much at this moment.  He wouldn't be doing this to Toto if he weren't desperate for a sense of some kind of control. 

Toto's end of the phone was quiet for a few seconds.  " Ron..." He sounded bone tired. "No, its not Spitz. Also not Elmer" 

The spike of adrenaline that Ron had felt after that dumb sentence came out of his mouth began to fade. The sick feeling in his gut did not.

"Then who? Certainly no one else associated with Blue."

"It's not often that I get to surprise you Ron." He could hear the uptick in Toto's mood "Somehow my students have shown up to be our backup."  

"Huh?!"

The confusion Ron felt was battling with fear.

Of all the people to have as backup in an M family case, students.  It's not that they won't be useful.

"Toto, what do you mean?" 

"That was who broke my window."

"Wait, which ones?" 

"Um... Knight, Hutter, Marsh, and Alyssa." 

"They're in Japan?..." They definitely are not supposed to be. "Did they tell you how they got here?"

"No specifics, just that they'd managed to avoid surveillance getting here."

"Leave it to them to be somehow worse than I was in school.  You weren't strict enough with them Isshiki Sensei."

"Ron!" The indignant voice was a cover for the way Toto was trying not to laugh. 

"I mean come on! There's no way they legally left Britain to get here, not with the Detective's Alliance on high alert."  He was trying to come up with some explanation for how they could have gotten to Japan, flights and visas would be difficult for children to arrange for themselves.

"That may be true, but you can't fault them for wanting to help.  Especially after what Alice did to their friends." 

"That's a good point, but Toto, what happened to you having respect for the law?" 

"Ron, what I don't know cannot hurt me."

 Huh. That's a departure from typical Toto.  What makes a person that will get onto someone for using thier phone while on the street turn a blind eye to something as serious as illegal international travel? Toto has some kind of angle here that he has not pushed yet.

"Oh! So you've gone out of your way to avoid asking them. If you lose your plausible deniability then they have to go home."  No worries Toto, two can play this game. He hadn't quite parsed what Toto was playing at, but he had no concerns about showing his hand right now.  He'd prefer the students went home, where they were safe and would stay out of trouble. 

"I didn't exactly tell them that, but I think they guessed something along those lines."

"They look up to you too much to put you in a position that would take you off the pedestal they've put you on. It's impressive that you've been able to garner so much respect from Blue students, Toto, I'm sure you've noticed that the place is crawling with people with authority issues."

"You know they really respect you too, Ron."  Ron wanted to laugh at that.

Respect? Me?

No doubt the students were probably in awe of his skill, but only a few years removed from where the students were standing, he doubted that his seniority was great enough to garner the type of respect that Toto thought the students had for him. 

"I wasn't the very cool teacher that taught them the most eventful class of their term. If anything they might be here more for you than me, Toto.  Some of them have been scared of me since they learned who I am and before that they just knew me as your your ditzy teaching assistant." 

"Oh Ron," there was an undercurrent of affection there, "they know we only work as a team and that you're an innocent man.  They haven't been scared of you since you saved them from Alice at Blue" 

Ron sighed, something warm settled in his chest where the hollow feeling had been. 

He'd figured it out.  Toto wasn't as sneaky as he thought he was. He wanted to have the students stay and help.  No doubt that the students would be useful, but allowing children to get involved in a case that would put them on the problem list of the Moriarty family and the Detectives Alliance was reckless.  The children had definitely considered the danger, but he doubted that they'd considered the fact that regardless of where the case went, this would be career suicide.  It was time to make Toto show his hand before this went on any further. "What are you trying to persuade me to do Toto?" 

"What do you mean Ron?" a put-upon air of cluelessness in Toto's voice.

He rolled his eyes.  "You get a few hours with me out of the picture and you're plotting something.  Don't lie to me." There was grin creeping onto his face.  Ron had known for a long time that Toto wasn't as dumb as he pretended to be, Toto knew that Ron knew this.   It didn't make much sense for him to play the part of clueless Toto without an audience. He probably thinks this whole thing is funny. 

"I knew from the moment I saw them that you'd want to send them back. It was a shock that you hadn't immediately raised a fuss when I told you the first time what was going on." 

"The first time!?  Toto, that's not fair, I was asleep!" followed by an incredulous laugh. 

"Uh-huh, and the moment Spitz is back in the country I'm convincing him to confiscate your supply of tranquilizers and tell me where you got them from. Really Ron, it can't be safe to take three doses of that in a day.  You're already well on your way to an early grave with all the kuromitsu you're powering that brain of yours with."  

Oh. Toto's mad about the tranquilizers.

On the one hand, Ron understood how this could be dangerous for him if he made a mistake.  On the other, he was guaranteed to be in danger if he'd left the safehouse to go play detective's assistant at the crime scene.

"It was just two doses of the tranquilizer and we are not addressing the brown sugar, that is a matter of life and death."  

A pause. Toto was being conniving today, he'd almost gotten Ron with that distraction. Incredible.

"You're trying to get me off the topic of your students.  What are you planning?" 

"They want to help."

A point that's already been well established.

"Okay. Something they could very easily do from Britain where they are somewhat safer from the M family."

"There isn't a place on this planet that is safe from the M family.  They've already met Alice. If they are in her sights no amount of distance will keep them safe and frankly, they're safer in close proximity to you. Your track record for stopping M family plots outstrips anything the Alliance has put forward."

"Toto..."

"I think we both know at this point that the surveillance will only be getting worse Ron and we don't have our normal third set of eyes now that Spitz is trapped at Blue."

Ron sighed.

Toto continued, "They've gotten here undetected.  Eventually, I won't be able to go over to check in with you. We need someone that can act as a go between, someone the alliance won't suspect or surveil."  This is scripted.  Toto wasn't talking like he was creating the sentences as he went, he was talking the way he did after Ron had coached him on how to explain a solved crime scene.  How long ago had Toto decided the kids needed to stay?  What had made him so nervous that he felt the need to rehearse the argument for it in his head?

"I know that this didn't go over easy with you Toto.  How convincing were they?"

"I didn't like the idea of involving them. But Ron, honestly, we don't have many options here. Sure they may respect us and want to help, but at the end of the day, they're a lot like you.  Any length that has to be gone to will be gone to if there is a case out there that interests them. I'd have been more persistent, but we have to think about what they could do if we refuse them.  Knight's father is the president of the Detective's Alliance, they know where I am and if they followed me somehow, they could know where you are." 

"Toto.  You didn't-"

"I'd never tell them where the safehouse is, not without talking to you first.  But knowing they've trained in the same place you did, they're going to significantly better at tracking undetected than those grunts the alliance has hired."  Toto seemed defensive. "Ron I refused to promise them the chance to help with the case before talking to you about it. Right now they think that I am absolutely opposed to the idea. But think of how much help they could be."

"I- I don't doubt their abilities. They're just too young to get tied up in a case like this.  We can do this ourselves."  Ron was trying not to think about the warehouse splattered with blood, confusion, a knife that didn't feel right in his hand.  He didn't want anything like that for Toto's students.

"Ron, I know that if we could operate the way we normally do it wouldn't be a question of whether it could be done." 

"I'm right here, Toto.  Is it really so different?"  Ron was becoming frustrated, he knew that he could do this. With every passing minute of this conversation he was gaining more and more reasons to hate the Detective's Alliance.  

How have I been in hiding a total of 2 days and somehow am so handicapped by this that even Toto is doubting my abilities?

"It is different when I have to be your eyes and ears in addition to your voice.  You know I don't see things like you do. One missed detail by me, you don't have the pieces you need to solve a case, and another person is dead.  We don't get unlimited tries with the M family, they will escalate the situation."  

Oh. Toto isn't disappointed in me, he's upset with himself.  

Ron had been distracted earlier when this came up. Clearly he hadn't said enough to make Toto recognize how essential he was to everything Ron did. 

"I know we'll get better at this as it goes on."

 It was weak, but Ron was grasping at straws.  Telling Toto how indispensable he was without derailing the discussion was impossible.  Ron would completely lose track of everything else he was trying to say if he went ahead and tried to explain to Toto how right he had been when he'd said 'I promise, I'll support you completely' all those months ago. 

"Ron, I can't live with the guilt. We don't even know who it was that Alice killed today.  By the time we do find out, how many families will I have to call on to give death notifications?" 

Oh no. Toto's breathing was rough on the other side of the phone and not in his usual 'panicked at a confusing crime scene' way.

"Toto. You are doing your best and that is more than enough. As for the guilt, you didn't kill those men."  He wanted Toto to actually understand how much he meant it when he said it. It was so hard to tell if any of this was getting across to Toto without being face to face.

"Ron..."

"Toto, I understand how you feel, you know I do.  We've had to live with the guilt after every one of the Moriarty cases we didn't solve quite fast enough.  And I know it feels worse now. It's a lot more like working alone when I'm just a voice in your ear instead of your shadow.  But if we bring the students into it, how much worse is the guilt going to be when something happens to one of them? Please. It's bad enough I have to sit here, useless, while Alice's sights are set on you."

"We've faced the M family before and we are both still here. Ron, this time isn't going to be any different.  Also, of the two of us, you have not been the useless one."

Ron chose to ignore that second sentence for the time being.  Where is the confidence in our ability to survive an outright attack from the M family coming from? 

"How close did we come to dying on that ship? at the auberge? Toto, what would have happened if we hadn't been as lucky as we were?  What could happen to you this time?" 

"We'll both come out of this unscathed if we solve this quick enough, you said it earlier.  Ron, we need the help,  I NEED the help. You know that those students will see things I won't. You're worried, but the people that Alice is killing have people that care for them too.  Solving this faster with more people is in our best interest.  The students clearly cannot be controlled without giving in to some of their demands, Ron. I bet Spitz doesn't even know they've left the country and he teaches tracking at Blue.  If we say no to them, there's no guarantee they're going home. For all we know they'll get themselves into a dangerous situation with the Alliance or the M family with no one else aware of it."

Ron had run out of steam by the time Toto finished his speech.

He can be so stubborn when he wants to be.

Ron had a few running theories on the topic, but he hadn't truly figured out exactly what delineated a situation where Toto would defer to Ron from a situation where Toto wouldn't let go of something until Ron agreed with him.  However, he had figured out that this situation was definitely the latter.

"Okay."  

"H-huh?" Toto was off balance, clearly he'd expected this conversation to go on much longer.

"You're right Toto. We need to solve this. And if you feel that you need to have the students help, then I won't stop you."

Oh.  That was not how I wanted to express that.

Goddammit. 

We're a team, Toto's not doing any of this alone.

"Ron?" Toto had caught Ron's mistake, the surprised tone to his voice had gone unsure, almost hurt...

Ron clarified, "I'm still concerned and I hate that they've put themselves in harm's way to help.  But we really can't let this go on too long and you're right, if we don't let the students get into dangerous situations in controlled amounts, they'll go find trouble on their own with no support. The M family is more dangerous the longer this goes on.  You're spot on about the students abilities, there's no telling what all four of those little geniuses could notice at a crime scene.  We should let them help if you're confident we'll be able to keep their exposure to dangerous situations to a minimum."

"Alright, okay, good. Uhm, I did get to talk to the students for a little bit, had to sneak out and go to a cafe so my shadow from the Alliance wouldn't notice them. I'll give you a breakdown of what I got from them before I had to leave." 

Ron looked down at his phone, noticed the clock for the first time. When did it so late?

"Not now"

"Huh?"

"Tomorrow. Toto, what time did you go to bed?" The question was pointless, he already knew he was going to dislike the answer about as much as Toto disliked knowing that Ron was using tranquilizers to keep himself from leaving the safehouse.

"1:30-ish?" 

Yep. I knew it. 

"It's 2:30, you can't go on pulling all-nighters forever. Get some rest. We'll work out the planning in the morning." 

"I won't be able to sleep with this case hanging over my head." 

Ron wanted to laugh.  He and Toto truly were a matched set, both with a vice that was going to send them to an early grave and both in denial that the vice was an issue.  He was fairly certain that if ghosts were real, someday Toto's would willingly spend it's eternity in the bowels of the Metropolitan Police Department writing up reports. Stubborn little workaholic.

"I can tell when you're lying Toto. You're in such a chronic sleep deficit that if I let you sit on the line in silence you'd be out cold in minutes." The most half-assed deduction Ron had ever given the space of a spoken sentence to. It wasn't really a deduction, Toto had fallen asleep on the phone only 2 weeks ago. Ron had stepped away for all of a minute and a half to track down a jacket and when he'd gotten back the only reply he'd been able to get through the phone was sleepy Toto noises. 

"You know too much for your own good."  A poorly stifled yawn came through the phone followed with a rustling noise. Ron had gotten him, hook, line, and sinker, the man was going to go to bed whether he liked it or not.

A grin crossed Ron's face at Toto's grouching. "Of course I do. Sleep. I'll call you before you leave for work tomorrow."

"Mmkay, g'night Ron" Toto's voice sounded like he was already drifting towards the edge of sleep. The phone hung up.

Ron's hand with the phone dropped back onto the couch.  He stared up through the windows over him.  It was hard to see any stars this deep in the city. 

He wasn't sure what he needed to think over first.  The case? The students? The Alliance?  The M family?  He wanted something to give Toto in the morning, it wouldn't be long before the second perpetrator turned up dead.  He'd be unable to resist coming out of hiding, with or without tranquilizers, if Toto became any more discouraged. They needed results. 

He tried walking back through the crime scenes from the day before in his mind.  Both were outdoor, somewhat closed areas.

The first, a man walking down a promenade. An umbrella in hand, bone conduction earphones, and sunglasses. A woman and her dog had walked by.  The man appeared to be watching a video when she passed. Then he was dead on his back, scratches on the throat, vomit near him, a pinprick wound where the base of the thumb met the wrist on the left hand.  Body reported by a male passerby. Water from the grass on the shins of his pants.  A crest spray painted on the grass a little away from the body. They knew where the crest was from. They'd figured out that the man couldn't see, that the video on his phone had more than likely been audio guiding him around the promenade, that the umbrella tip had been worn down from being used as a cane.  He'd gotten down on his knees, reached under a bench, made contact with a spiky device that injected poison. The body had been found, identity unknown.   Then Toto showed up, the crime scene clean-up crew on the scene already collecting evidence. Ron had heard shoe covers on all but one set of feet.  They'd checked photos from the scene, the man without shoe covers reaching under the bench, thick gloves on. 

Toto had immediately called to report the identity of the culprit.  The man had just been found dead. 

Ron paused.  Why had the first victim reached under the bench?  He'd been guided by an audio application, sure, but what had he been trying to do?  In what situations does a person in a park reach under a bench, not towards the ground, but towards the bottom of the seat. He must have thought he was there to collect something, a note? money? a device with instructions?  He couldn't see. He wouldn't have known exactly where what he was reaching for was, the phone camera would have had difficulty picking anything up angled upwards under the bench, rendered almost useless once it had accommodated for the sunlight going through the slats of the bench. Anything in shadow would have been functionally invisible to the camera and thus to the victim.  

He wouldn't have been able to tell where the item he was reaching for was.  He would have needed to rely on touch, that meant fingertips dragging along the underside of the bench. But in that scenario, the wound would have been on his fingertips or the palm of his hand, the most sensitive parts, the ones he would have used to try and feel something.  

The wound was on the base of the thumb, side of the wrist.  His hand could not have been moving forward when the wound was inflicted, the location made it impossible. If his had had been moving forward, the wound would have then been on the thumb itself, not the base of the thumb.  The hand could have been moving up towards the bench when the wound was inflicted, but this is unlikely.  His hand would have needed to be far under the bench for a needle to get to the base of his thumb. Odds are, he would have made contact with the murder weapon using his fingers or his palms by the time his hand was that far under the bench. The wound could have been inflicted as he drew his hand back toward himself.  The location of the wound made sense in that context.  Perhaps the weapon was a singular needle positioned at an angle so that it would only poke as a hand was drawn back. It would explain the wound location.  It seemed that he was under the bench looking for something, but he wouldn't have drawn his hand back with enough force to put a needle through the skin unless he had found what he was looking for.  Toto hadn't mentioned any items of interest on the body.  The item would have been there with the corpse if the man found it. He'd died quickly, there would have been no time for him to put what he found somewhere else.  The second victim wouldn't have been able to take something off the body at the crime scene without raising suspicion.

Had he been at the bench to collect something?  There was another option. One that better explained why the man didn't make contact with the murder weapon until his hand was already far under the bench.  He hadn't been looking for something at all. He was placing something under the bench.

Ron sat up.  He rolled off the couch in frustration, this woke the cat which had been napping on Toto's chair, it made a grumpy "mmrrmph" at him before settling again. If Toto had been present in any way, shape, or form, Ron would have flicked his hair, but he wasn't, so there was no point.  The whole thing had started partially as a joke, but he'd kept doing it after he'd seen how flustered it made Toto the first time he'd done it.

The victim had been placing an object, not looking for something. THIS. This is something I should have considered an option earlier. 

Nothing of interest was on the body because it had been picked up with the murder weapon by the second victim.  The item he was told to plant could have been anything. He should have known. A Moriarty case meant tied up loose ends, why kill someone specific if they weren't a loose end? Victims in these cases are never chosen at random and victims that were aware of any aspect of the situation are not interchangeable the way unsuspecting victims could be.

The first victim must have known something. This was becoming a more complex situation than he'd suspected. 

Are we even sure that the second victim placed is the one that placed the first murder weapon? Is there a chance that there was a third person involved with the setup of the first crime? If so, is there a third body? Not the body of whoever killed the second victim, but the one who placed the murder weapon of the first.  This is a Moriarty case, there's no hard and fast rule for how many people a case like this could have at play. It's not be out of the question for a third party to have been involved at the crime scene.

We have no reliable way of knowing how long the crest had been marked on the ground.  It may not have only been for the first victim and for Ron as Alice's calling card.  It could have also notated the bench for the second victim.  Anyone could have put it there. It would have been necessary to mark the bench somehow if the second victim was not the one to place the weapon.  With the bench unmarked there would have been a risk of another crime scene worker finding the weapon before the second victim did.  

If he was right in his assumption, he had a new timeline of the crime. Initially, someone (maybe the second victim) placed the murder weapon under the bench and painted the crest.  The victim had been told to place an object under a marked bench.  He'd gone to the crime scene and done just that. Unbeknownst to him, the murder weapon had been placed under the bench as well and it did its job.  He died. The second victim infiltrated the crew at the crime scene and collected the item placed by the victim and the murder weapon. 

The situation was looking much different than what Ron's tranquilizer-addled mind had drawn up earlier. 

What had happened between the second victim collecting the murder weapon and his  death?  How had he traveled between the two parks? Where did the murder weapon and the possible planted object from the first victim go?

How much time elapsed between the time that the crime scene crew showed up at the first crime scene and the discovery of the second body?

A few hours.  A body found at another park only 4 kilometers away, 30 minutes walking or by train.  What did the victim do in those few hours?  Where did the first murder weapon and the mystery object go?

Ron reviewed the second crime scene. Projected it on the backs of his eyelids while he sat on the rug near the leather couch.

Sarugaku Prehistoric Dwelling park.  Small, small enclosed park, two possible entrances, surrounded on two sides by buildings. Which means many windows looking out over the park. Lots of potential witnesses if it werent for the fact that the location of the body was conveniently in the only part of the park with a significant amount of cover from trees, within the remains of the dwelling itself.

The body, laying neatly on the back, no personal effects, in the same jumpsuit that  had been worn while on the crime scene crew.  The hat that had been worn at the first crime scene was missing.  Black shoes with thick soles, different from the lighter canvas sneakers he'd been in in the photos taken earlier in the day.  A dribble of vomit near his face, dark scratches on both sides of the neck, dirt under his nails.  The crest only a few feet from the body. No visible puncture wounds.  A woman that reported seeing the victim in his last moments while passing by.  The woman had been slightly older than the witness at the prior crime scene. Pictures sent by Toto showed her wearing an apron over casual clothing, carrying her purse.  A housewife on her way to get groceries or to pick up her child from school? Perhaps.

   She reported hearing the victim yelling for "help" and scratching at his throat in his final moments,  before he collapsed and stopped moving.  She had called the emergency line immediately. Then later, in her interview she reported that he'd been grasping at a paper with an image on it before his death. A painting of a monster, Asian art style, done in brushwork, completely unlike the image from Guardian of the Citadel.  

Indescribable is what she had called it.  She stated that the wind blew the picture away. Right before he died the victim had said Chimera. 

He and Toto had fixated on Chimera immediately when Toto had been at the crime scene.  Ron had become too excited at the prospect of having a clue as to what Alice was planning for this string of cases and had needed to take another dose of his tranquilizers before he was unable to stop himself from running out to go to the crime scene.  He'd lost his chance at a lot of evidence collection with that choice. 

What do I have here that I could work with?

What can I figure out if I ignore the chimera clue for now? 

This victim had died with an audience. Invaluable information really.  A woman passing by the small park on the street, hearing a call for "help" then moving to help the victim as he scratched at his neck and then collapsed.  

The rounded indent that makes up the remains of the dwelling is not more than 30 m from either entrance of the park. If she had been moving quickly there's no doubt that she would have been there with enough time to see his dying moments up close, even with a poison that had shown itself to be as fast acting as this one.   Ron decided to take what she had said at face value for the time being.

The question of how the victim had been poisoned was problematic. She didn't report seeing anyone leaving the park as she moved towards the victim.  The two street-facing exits were close enough together that she would have been able to see someone leaving through either of them as she entered the park.  The only other exit was onto a track field for the neighboring school. It was closed with a gate and was directly across from both street-side entrances in a park that was only  40 m long. She would have seen someone if they'd gone through there.  

There was not a visible puncture wound on the victim. Meaning the route that the poison took is unclear. 

The victim had been alone in the park. There's very few ways that someone can be administered a poison with no visible evidence left behind without someone being present to poison them. 

The man had been scratching at his neck before he died. 

Somewhere between the last crime scene and the park he'd shed a hat, a pair of shoes, a murder weapon, and potentially a fourth object.  He'd picked up a pair of black shoes.

 He'd gained the dirt under his nails.  

The bottom of the dwelling was a dirt floor.

Ron decided he'd have to ask Toto if the dirt under the nails matched that of the dwelling and what had been used to make the crest this time.

Scratches on the throat.  Dirt under the nails. The marks to the throat had been dark, marred with small skin tears, red angry broken capillaries, bruises that had been made so violently that they filled even as his heart stopped. 

But was there skin under the victim's nails? 

Toto didn't mention it.

If the scratches had been self inflicted there had to be skin, right?.  The woman saw him, scratching at his throat before he collapsed. After that he'd grasped at the paper.  Then he'd been dead.  Not a window of time there for skin under the nails to be removed or covered up by something else.

He'd have to ask Toto about the forensics as soon as he woke up. Light skin intermingled with dirt beneath the nails seemed hard to miss. 

Ron was certain he'd missed something critical with his emergency tranquilizer stunt and Toto must have been too distracted by Ron's sudden disappearance to catch whatever it had been.  There were details that bothered him: the dirt under the nails, the lack of puncture wound, the hours that the victim was unaccounted for between the first and second crime scenes, the missing objects and the new shoes.  Ron was missing what would tie the details together.

He slumped back against the couch, back hurting from sitting on the floor for who knows how long.  The sky outside had started to get the first twinges of blue light. 

It's going to be dawn soon. 

Ron shut his eyes with the intention of resting them for a few minutes before he called Toto.

Chapter Text

The phone's ringtone woke Ron up. He jolted forward towards the phone and immediately regretted it.  His neck might've actually been trying to come off his body.  Apparently the few minutes of shut eye had turned into a full blown nap. His neck had decided to take the opportunity get a absolutely brutal crick in it.  He felt half-alive as he looked at the phone, Caller ID 'Toto'.  It was 6:37. He must be getting ready for work. 

He answered the phone.

"Hellooo" Oh. His voice sounded awful. 

"Morning Ron!" Toto sounded disturbingly  bright for someone who had slept as little as he did.  Ron smiled and laid his had back against the couch, squinting his eyes against the rays of sun that were currently trying to burn his retinas through the slanted windows. 

Toto sounds chipper.  At least there is one thing right in this world.  

"I got about 20 minutes before I have to start heading to work, you think we could go over what I heard from the students yesterday?  It might be good have them back to talk later today" 

"Sure" Ron's voice was rough and felt like it was straining.  He needed water, he was almost scared that he could somehow injure his vocal cords more than he already had. Maybe one of the nurses had warned him about that before he was discharged? He couldn't remember, he'd been a little distracted by Toto's unexpected appearance to pick him up.  

"Ron, were you asleep?" Toto sounded a little surprised on the other end of the phone, a little guilty. 

Ron was getting his footing so he could get some water from the kitchenette, his back made a concerning crackle.

 What I'd do for the massive futons from the floor of sloth right now.  

"Yeah, don't worry about it, was just trying to think through the cases a little more last night and got to bed late." 

"Pffft, how much later than 2:30 can a person get Ron?" 

"I think the sun may have started coming up"

"Oh! So you want to talk to me about all-nighters and then proceed to get 40 minutes of sleep. I see." Ron could feel Toto shaking his head on the other side of the phone. Smug bastard, his brain supplied as he tried to get his half-asleep left hand to cooperate and pick up a glass to fill with water. 

"Fair enough, but which one of us gets to go out and have a day job and which one of us is currently trapped in a house." He punctuated this by taking a gulp of water.

"It's an interesting second-hand store.  You said so yourself."  He paused and then  "The students."  He sure was eager to tell Ron what he knew. 

Ron wandered back into the living area to pace. "The students, Toto, what'd they tell you?"  On to business. He hoped his brain would get booted up before he missed something he'd need to know later.

"They didn't tell me everything they knew and it almost seemed like Knight was hiding something that he only wanted to tell us after we agreed to let them help.  We didn't really go back and forth about it but he said it was something he needed to tell you and it was about the detective's alliance."

Ron paused in his pacing. "The other students didn't know what he was keeping from telling?"

"They looked as surprised as I felt when the topic came up."  He heard the rush of water as a faucet turned on on the other side of the phone. 

"Huh" Strange.  Ron started walking again, he grabbed a packet of brown sugar syrup from the coffee table and twisted it open. 

"Other than that, there's not much to say except that the students were doing their very best to be super convincing that we needed to let them stay and then they went on a long tangent about how they loved seeing Japan and all the sights they'd seen.   You know, they'd only been here a few hours when they tracked me down, how many cool things could they have seen in that time, realistically? Oh, one second." 

The clatter of the Toto's phone being set on the counter, a long pause in the conversation while Toto brushed his teeth.  Ron tried to digest what Toto had told him so far.

"Hmmmm... that's the only thing they could tell you without telling you how they got here?"

"They were tightlipped on that, the getting here thing." The faucet turned off on Toto's end of the phone. 

"You did want them to be."  The brown sugar had finally started making the wheels in his brain turn. "but I wonder if that's the only reason why they didn't go into it."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you want to take a stab at it first Detective Isshiki?"

Toto was probably rolling his eyes on the other side of the phone, "I'm off the clock, Ron." 

"Okay, do you want to take a stab at it, Toto?"  Toto sighed in exasperation. A smile graced Ron's face, there were few things he enjoyed in this life as much as being an absolute nuisance to Toto. 

"Other than the likelihood that what got them here was likely against several international laws?..." Toto paused, "You know, I think I might need to be more than 2 cups of coffee into my morning before you start quizzing me Ron, just go for it." 

"What if their method of arriving here was legal?" 

"Huh?  Like someone pulled some strings to get them here legally, somehow with no one at Blue finding out?" Toto's voice was punctuated by the sound of his comb going through his hair, occasionally clattering against the phone as Toto held it to his ear. "No one at Blue knows right? Spitz would have told us.  You haven't heard from him Ron?"  

"Not a word from Spitz, but also: Right, someone could have called in some favors to get them here legally."  He wanted Toto to see what his brain had just put together. "Think about it...." 

"It couldn't be just one person" 

"You're right. ...  It could be the Detective's Alliance." 

Toto's side of the line went deadly silent. Ron waited.

Toto sighed.  "I don't want you to be right about this Ron."

"I hope I'm not right Toto." Ron disliked having this conversation more than he had thought he would.  The idea that the Detective's Alliance could be using the students as bait had weighed on the edges of his mind since last night.   He hadn't wanted to verbalize it, but something about Toto's comment a minute ago had brought the thought to the forefront of his mind with full force. 

"You're not trying to tell me you've changed your mind about letting them help us are you?"  The dragging sound of the comb had stopped.

"Of course not Toto.  We've faced scarier people than the Detective's Alliance and we need the student's help regardless of who sent them. I'm only in hiding because me being in Detective Alliance custody would seriously obstruct our ability to work the cases Alice has thrown at us."

"Right"  Toto's voice sounded shaky and distracted. Ron heard a rustle as if Toto were worrying at his hair like he did when he'd hit a problem he hadn't sorted out.  

"You're going to mess up your hair Toto." The grabbing that Toto was almost certainly doing now was going to erase the work he'd done on his hair earlier.

"Oh." Ron heard a deep intake of breath and the quiver as Toto let it out slowly. He was trying to steady himself. 

"There's something bothering you."  He wanted to know what Toto was thinking about.  What about the Detective Alliance's possible new involvement in the situation was making him fret like this? 

"We probably won't have a way of knowing for sure if the Alliance sent them, will we Ron?" 

"No, almost certainly not" Ron made a turn at the far end of the room, starting another circuit of the living area, watching alternating light and shadow from the windows sliding over his feet as he walked.

Toto sighed. "We're going to have to take precautions as if the Alliance did send them then." 

 Ron stopped near the couch. "What are you thinking Toto?" 

"We know they probably could track me without me noticing.  I can't go over there anymore, can I?"  Toto sounded sad, resigned to the situation.

Ron wanted to throw up.  Toto had struck a nerve that Ron had been trying to pretend wasn't sensitive.   The now-three days since he'd had to leave his apartment had been awful.  

He missed the familiarity of knowing that Toto was going to come through the door at a little after seven on weekdays absolutely exhausted,  flop down in a boneless pile on the floor of sloth, and complain about his back while Ron halfheartedly harassed him for cases and came up with sneaky ways to add kuromitsu into whatever he was making for them to eat.  Toto always caught on that he was adding the syrup to the food and he'd switch from complaining about his back or the awful fluorescent lights at the station to whinging about the brown sugar and asking Ron if he was trying to drag Toto to an early grave with him.  Ron would finish cooking while facing away from Toto so he wouldn't see the fond smile on his face, then they'd eat, watch something meaningless on TV or talk about nothing until Toto got tired and took himself home or crashed on the futons on the floor.  The routine had been easy to fall into and was, by far, the best part of his day.  Ron had been living the dream and hadn't even realized it until it had been taken away from him by the two idiot Alliance goons that had knocked on his door three days ago.

The way Toto had been stressed and serious, visiting only for short periods so that the shadows the Alliance had put on him wouldn't find Ron, looking as worn down and tired as Ron could remember him looking was awful.  He'd liked having relaxed, happy Toto to himself, having hours of the comfort of feeling his presence in the same room, of getting to be himself with someone who knew him like no one else.   Even a little bit of stressed Toto was better than no Toto. What was being suggested right now was certainly going to kill Ron. 

There was something catching at the inside of his throat, a hot feeling around his eyes.  He tried to push it down. 

"It's probably the smart thing to do, staying away unless we have a guarantee that it wouldn't be possible for them to be tracking you." Ron was hoping that he was sounding as normal as he wished he was feeling   "It's not going to be very fun, but we'll still be able to talk and..."

"Ron, I know you're going to hate it, but we cannot have the alliance knowing where you are." Toto had caught him, he knew Ron too well to miss that he'd been trying to cover the hurt in his voice. "They've got some dangerous people looking for you and I don't want to find out what they'll do to you if they do find you.  I know you want to think they'll just detain you, but seriously, Spitz made it sound like they'd do a bit more than that to get information out of you." 

Ron slouched down onto the couch and closed his eyes tightly. Something warm was pushing against the backs of his eyelids. "You're right Toto. You even figured out what we need to do in case the students have been sent by the alliance before I did. Maybe we need to put you in charge of doing the deductions"  he tried to make a joke, but the bittersweet smile on his face was marred by tears he hadn't wanted to spill. 

"Don't tell me you'd give up your detective work that easy, Ron." Toto's voice was warm, the sentence practiced, one he'd said to Ron a dozen different ways at this point. It was pulling Ron back to the bigger picture. This would all be temporary. 

"Oh Toto, as if you would let me do that." Ron propped his head on one hand and wiped his eyes with the back of the hand holding the phone. 

"You know I wouldn't, what'd become of my career without you Ron?" Toto was doing his best to drag a grin onto Ron's face. Pretending that the partnership could be simplified to just the cases and detective work, as many had assumed, had been a running joke between them for a long time.

Ron sighed. The tightness in his throat wasn't so severe anymore. "Speaking of that career Toto, they won't be promoting you anytime soon if you come in late." 

"Ah!" Toto's surprised noise was what actually put a smile on Ron's face.

"Take the mic with you in case there are any new developments Toto!"  Ron hoped Toto could hear him as distracted as he was, chaotic sounds were coming from Toto's side of the phone.  Is he packing his briefcase?

"Of course, I'll call you on the way to the scene if there's anything. Also, I'll try to meet the students after work to talk about them helping, if there's nothing new on the case I'll call you then!" 

"Okay, talk to you then"  He heard Toto's apartment door close, Toto fumbling with his housekeys.

"Bye Ron!"  The phone hung up.

Ron laid on the couch, tried to resign himself to his new solitary confinement as he looked up at the morning sky through the slanted window.

There was a sound of something small and metal sliding against the tile floor of the kitchenette at irregular intervals.  Ron looked over.  The cat was slapping the side of its empty food bowl, it had a baleful look in its eyes as it focused on Ron's horizontal form. 

"I know that bowl was full when I gave you dinner last night, it's not even time for your breakfast yet. You've got 30 minutes. "

"Mraaaaaaah." The drawn out sound was at a significantly higher volume than Ron was used to hearing the cat talk at.

The cat is not going to be reasoned with today. 

Ron got up to refill the bowl. He wondered if he could really call it solitary confinement if the cat was here. He had when he was back in his apartment before Toto had shown up.  This train of thought is exhausting. He needed to go back to sleep. 

Ron had been in the middle of seeing how many different jackets he could fit on his body at the same time when he remembered that he'd forgotten to ask Toto about the crime scenes.  It had been frustrating, taking off 26 jackets of varying sizes so that he had enough mobility in his arms to get at the phone in his back pocket. 

'Has forensics brought anything back on the victims yet?  Anything on the nails, shoes, skin breaks on victim 2?'

He hit send on the text.

He still had about 8 jackets on.  He surveyed himself in a full length mirror against one of the walls.

Boredom's a very interesting look on me.

He stared down at the pile of jackets on the floor in front of him.  It was going to be a lot of work to get them unwrinkled, on hangers, and back in their respective sections of the second-hand store. 

I wonder if Toto's uncle will notice if I don't get these back in the exact spots they were from...  Were there 12 or 14 that I took from downstairs?

He'd been debating whether the leather bomber jacket had been on a rack in the stock room or on the rack of more expensive clothing near the front of the store when he heard a buzz from his phone upstairs.  Stock room rack it is.  He put the jacket in place and climbed the stairs to the loft three at a time. 

It was a text from Toto. 

'Nothing from forensics, there's a backlog and Amamiya didn't want to hear it when I requested permission for the victims to be done urgently.'

He sent back a frowny face and put the phone back on the table. 

No new developments and another half of an afternoon to pass.  He'd taken his time getting the jackets back to their respective homes, the only one he hadn't been sure on was the bomber jacket.  The activity had eaten up a chunk of time, but not enough. 

He considered the murals on the walls of the loft.  It's a shame Toto won't be coming by much anymore, I could have made a game of adding things to the murals until he noticed...  He looked around the room again, the objects filling the store made for a jumbled mix of colors. Maybe color-code the place?  It'd take at least 3 days.  He eyed all the light blue objects in the loft and then decided he should get to work on his new project. 

Toto is going to flip when he sees this.  A grin was starting to creep across his face. 

Chapter Text

Ron stared at the collected objects in front of him, various shades of desaturated oranges, yellows, and light browns.  He was at a bit of an impasse. The other colors had been easy. A blue was a blue, even as the color approached green it was still possible to categorize the object as one or the other.  For these pale colors it wasn't so easy, especially for yellow. Yellow was hard to define. He figured even the most trained eye had difficulty delineating a highlighter yellow from a chartreuse, a warm yellow from a pale orange, a darker yellow from a light brown. He wasn't trained in color analysis, he was trained in detective work.  Trying to figure out how to sort the pile of objects in front of him was starting to give him a headache.  

They could be incorporated into the section of the color they were most like.  The idea seemed unappealing. The alternative was to categorize them as their own color...  but what to call it?

Ron put a pin in the thought, he could probably spend an hour going back and forth on this and he had other tasks for his color coding that he could do.  There were several stacks of blue, green, and pink objects near the banister that he needed to take downstairs to their new respective sections of the store.  

He started on the first armload of the green stack. 

Toto had called him when he'd gotten off work, a little less than an hour ago.  He'd seemed a bit clipped in his text about forensics earlier, but the slight shift in tone did nothing to prepare Ron for the frustration Toto had about the forensics situation on his commute home. 

'I don't understand why she's refusing to clear me for urgent forensics on the victims.  She was there the last time we had a Moriarty case where we were guaranteed a chain of deaths!  She knows how fast these cases can move.'

Ron had agreed that it was odd that the forensics wasn't a priority, but he also considered that this was not as high profile as the string of murders that had been orchestrated by Winter in Shibuya.  

'She's not likely to change her mind on running urgent forensics as long as there is no third victim'

Toto had grumbled loudly at that and dropped the issue.  One thing to be grateful for, the lack of any new moves from Alice. It was nerve-wracking. The break from the pattern that the rest of the Moriarty family had set.  He and Toto had been anticipating a new victim since last night and almost 24 hours later there had been no developments. 

They'd moved on to the topic of the students at that point, Toto planned to discuss the cases with them once he got home.  He and Ron had walked through the most likely locations that a second tracker could be at and how Toto could inconspicuously check them before he had the students take the hidden route to the apartment that they'd drawn up.  Ron felt that the students needed to see the two existing crime scenes.  For the new crime scenes, they settled on having the students go behind Toto and the crime scene crews to review the locations, after that Toto would brief them on what the scene had looked like prior to the cleanup crew's work.  With any luck, any information missing from Toto's evaluation would be caught and the students wouldn't raise any alarms by making an appearance with Toto.  

They had ended the call, planning to get Ron on the phone as soon as the students had gotten to Toto's. 

Any minute now that phone should be ringing. 

He brought the last armload of green objects to their new home in the front left corner of the store and went back upstairs to settle on the couch. 

He'd just sat down when he felt a pair of eyes on him. 

He looked around.

That cat again.

It was seated in front of its food bowl.  Staring.

Ron sighed and got up to feed it before the cat decided to escalate the situation. 

The first few minutes of the next call from Toto had been a jumbled mess of background noises that Ron assumed was Toto trying to get the students up from the ground level to the balcony inconspicuously. The noises were replaced by greetings and then a lull. 

"I'm impressed you came, you really startled me..." Toto stated. 

"I said we should've told him first..." one student said sounding mollified. Was that Marsh? 

"He would've stopped us if we had, Marsh." another student interrupted.

"Once we learned that Kamonohashi-san was being targeted by the World Detective Alliance and can't go anywhere, we decided the best thing would be to come without telling anyone." the student continued.  Hmmm... that was definitely Hutter's voice. 

Ron felt that it was a good time to break into the conversation that he'd been listening to, "Hey yall!  Which means that nobody knows you're here, right?" 

There were a few excited greetings from the students before Knight answered in a serious tone, "Right, not even the other blue teachers know." 

Interesting... 

"Who told you that we were in a pinch?" Ron asked.

"Uh, Well..." Marsh seemed like he'd been caught off guard. 

Then Alyssa's confident voice came through the phone, "I'll explain. We planned to go visit Isshiki-sensei, but Spitz-sensei told us we should forget about it, so we pressed him as to why.   He said he couldn't tell us, so when we said we'd go of to Japan if he didn't, He spilled all of it."

Huh... While Spitz was their most likely source of information, It's surprising that the students' prying for information hadn't gotten back to us before the kids had time to make it to Japan.

"Wha-?!" Toto sounded appalled,  "That's extortion!"

"I can picture Spitz's look of dismay..." Ron shook his head. Probably the same one he'd worn the day I asked him to break into Blue to steal records. 

"And you ended up coming to Japan anyway!" Toto continued.

"Well, we couldn't just ignore it after we heard what's up." said Alyssa.

"It seems like Spitz-sensei's hands are tied", one supplied followed by "Of course we'd come to help!" from another student.

"Good grief... You kids are as lively as always.  What'd you tell the school?" Ron asked. 

"We told 'em that we all got COVID" Hutter exclaimed. He sounded like he was proud of the clever idea.

"Yikes, That's awful.  So Spitz doesn't know?" Ron could tell Toto was cringing at the very thought of COVID as he asked the question.

Ron phone began to ring with a second incoming call. 

Speak of the devil...

"Seems like he figured it out anyway" Ron cut in before he put Toto on hold.  

"ARE MY STUDENTS THERE, RON-KUN!?" Spitz's panicked voice grated at Ron's ears the moment he picked up.

"Hey, Spitz.  Yep, your students just arrived at Toto's place." Ron answered.

"For real?!  You've got to be kidding me.  Guess my bad feeling was on the mark!" Spitz was very clearly not happy with the situation.

"I'll connect you so you can talk to them" 

He merged the two calls and Toto's voice came through the phone again.

"So you guys learned about Billy Goji's true identity, right?" Toto asked.

The students all responded in the affirmative, displaying a range of emotions from disgust, anger, disbelief, and acceptance.

Spitz interrupted the students, "A-Anyway,  Get back to England you guys!  You'll just make trouble for Ron-kun and Tototo!" he seemed uncomfortable with them getting involved with yet another M family case. 

"That's not true!" Marsh complained.

"Since, Kamonohashi-san can't move around, we'll act as his eyes and ears in our fields of specialty!"  Alyssa added.

"Yeah!  There's a limit to what Isshiki-sensei can do on his own, right?" Hutter had been the one that stumbled upon the critical point of the argument for keeping the students in Japan. 

What Toto felt about the students helping and what he'd projected to the students about having them help were opposites.  Ron chose to go for the reversal of roles that he and Toto tended to drop into while working cases. 

"I was actually just saying that to Toto earlier.  But there's no way I can put you students in danger." he said.

"Please don't treat us like children." Knight said, frustratedly.

"This may sound like vanity, but even though you helped us, we still made it through the Blue incident." added Alyssa, "We have more experience than the average adult detective." 

Ron was about to open his mouth to argue that skills and experience were two very different things when Knight started talking.

"Plus, I have some Detective Alliance information that Isshiki-sensei needs to know." 

There was stunned silence on all three ends of the call.  That was not what Toto had made it sound like this morning.  If Toto was the one who needed to hear it, why had Knight continued to withhold the information when meeting with Toto yesterday? 

The silence had been stretching on a little too long. 

"What do you mean?" Ron asked.

"As I said before, My father is the Chairman of the Alliance." Knight started and then was interrupted by Spitz, "Now that you mention it, he did just get promoted, huh...." 

"Yes, He's the head of the Alliance and I can get my hands on the information he has." he continued.

Ron heard a few exclamations of surprise from the other side of the line.

"Basically you managed to sneak a look at your father's top-secret Detective Alliance intel?" Ron asked "Is that why you said 'Alice is coming'?"

"Yes, well. more or less..." Knight answered.

More or less....?

"Is that even possible?" Toto asked, once again sounding shocked.

"Of course, father guards his information carefully, but I can get around that using my position in the family and a bit of cunning." said Knight, "Above all, father is so absorbed in this case that he pays me no mind and it would never occur to him that I might attempt something so audacious." 

Something about the collection of statements gave Ron pause.  He needed to think about this. Including the dig at his father in that made Ron feel like Knight was using the manufactured awkwardness to cover up a topic he actually didn't want to discuss.  He'd seemed proud at Blue, not the type to air out personal issues like that with classmates or teachers.

After a pause, Toto spoke, "Come to think of it, I heard you were away from school for a while, Knight-kun." 

"Yeah, that was for this, too." said Alyssa "He was gathering World Detective Alliance Info"

Ron lost focus on what was being said through the phone for a moment. He was curious. He didn't remember Toto telling him about Knight's absence from school.  I'll have to ask about that later though.

"So, will you tell us what you found out?" Ron tried to get the conversation back onto the pressing topic of the information. 

"Of course, I would be delighted to if you're asking Kamonohashi-san" said Knight, sounding like he was experiencing a positive emotion for the first time since the conversation had started.

"Thanks...." Something was definitely off.  Who was the information for? Me or Toto?  If it's for both of us why hadn't he just told Toto earlier?

"The ones being targeted in this investigation are the surviving former M Family members who weren't connected to Alice.  Fearing Alice, they fled to Japan using forged passports." Knight explained.

"So then the two men who were killed were criminals employed by the M family?" Toto asked.

"That's right" he said "The Detective Alliance just confirmed that the victims were two of the criminals who fled to Japan." 

Just confirmed.

Just confirmed. 

Just confirmed. 

How recently was just confirmed? 

The first victim had been found just under 36 hours ago. 

The students had arrived at Toto's for the first time about 24 hours ago after spending a few hours in Tokyo. 

A flight from London to Tokyo took at least 11 hours. 

Ron had assumed that the chairman had remained based in England given the current M family situation. If Knight had simply gotten a glimpse of his father's intel, as he claimed, he could have known that several M family members had fled to Japan with forged passports, but he couldn't have known that there were two victims or that the victims in question were in fact two of the fleeing M family members before leaving England.

The only way that Knight's version of the events could be true is if the chairman himself were in Japan or if the Alliance was keeping this data electronically and it was poorly secured enough for a student to get into their system.

The presence of the chairman in Japan seemed unlikely at best.  Unlikely, but not impossible.  Ron would prefer that being the truth over learning that the Alliance's information was freely available to anyone with a modicum of computer knowledge.  Could the alliance really be that dumb?

"The Alliance sure works fast..."  Ron was fighting to keep suspicion out of his voice. 

"We know of four people who fled to Japan, which means there's a high chance that the other two will also be murdered." Knight added.  Huh... so I guess there's our projected number of victims.

"I see... do you have any details about those two?" there was desperation edging into Toto's voice.

"No, I don't know that much" Knight said, effectively cutting off Toto's line of questioning.

"Given the speed of the killings so far, it seems the remaining two don't have much time left." Alyssa supplied.

"I agree, Alyssa-kun." The students seem well aware of the timeline that came with Moriarty cases, Ron noted.

"Then we can't just sit around!  We've gotta do something!" Hutter exclaimed.  Well maybe not all of the students were aware of the short timeline...

"Yeah, that's true." That was Toto's thinking out loud voice. 

"Hey! Wait a minute!" and there he was realizing what he said.

Oh Toto....  Ron had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing. The man's inability to keep a thought to himself is incredible. At least it seems he's caught himself before he let the students know who actually wanted them to stay in Japan to work on the cases. 

"We never agreed to let you help us." Toto corrected.

"But earlier, you said backup had arrived, Toto." Ron interjected.

"Huh?!" 

"I feel like it'd be dangerous to send them back now.  Could you keep them safe and figure something out, Tototo?" Spitz asked.

It was Ron's turn to go 'Huh?!'

He had expected Spitz to require more persuasion to agree to let the students stay in Japan. That was half the reason that he'd pretended to be enthusiastic about the student's involvement.  Of all people, Spitz should be aware of the dangers of bringing anyone on board a case concerning the M family. Has he really forgotten the years he'd spent looking for his brother that easily?

"Aggh, Fine!" Toto gave in, and to the students he said, "Just don't go anywhere dangerous or do anything on your own!" 

There was a rush of cheering from the students on the other side of the phone. 

"Good Grief." Toto sounded exhausted at the idea of the work he'd just signed himself up for. 

Ron shook his head.  Toto's done it this time.  Arguing to have the students help with no consideration for the fact that he's the one babysitting four of the smartest, sneakiest children he'd ever met. He wasn't going to know a moment's peace until all four of them were confirmed to be on a plane back to England. Perhaps it's what the man deserves... Ron shook his head at that. No, Toto doesn't deserve that, but he's managed to get himself into it so it's going to be his problem.

"As my representatives, I'd like you to reinvestigate the crime scenes." Ron proclaimed.

The students loudly responded in the affirmative. 

Toto hadn't thought that Ron meant for the students to investigate the crime scenes immediately, it was abundantly clear from the shocked sound he'd made as soon as Ron had started briefing them on what to look for at the two locations.  

Ron suggested that the students split up into groups of two so that both locations could be examined at once.   There was no way for Toto to be two places at once and it wouldn't be fair for one group to have a chaperone and the other to go without. Ron had taken a little bit of mercy on Toto.  The students would be going to the crime scenes on their own, Toto can stay at the apartment if he wants. He's just gotten off work after all. 

The anxiety about the students going to the crime scenes alone had started eating at Ron as he'd briefed them and it worsened as he heard them begin to move around to get their belongings before leaving Toto's apartment.

If I could just leave the secondhand store, Toto could take one group and I'd take the other.

Wait. If I could just leave, they could be on a plane home right now and I'd be going to look at the crime scenes myself.

He was starting to fidget. There was one more syringe of the tranquilizer that he'd placed on the coffee table.  The desire to leave the safehouse wasn't as strong as it had been yesterday morning.  The anxiety, however, felt like it was gearing up to match what he'd felt after hearing the broken glass that announced the students' arrival.  He eyed the syringe.

It's a really bad time for this. 

He wasn't sure if the thought was about the growing waves of anxiety or what he was considering doing to stop them. 

He grabbed the syringe and used it before he gave himself any more time to get wound up. 

"Gah!" Shit. That hurt just as much as the first two times.  There has to be a better technique for this. 

"What's the matter?"

One of the students was talking.  He was having trouble telling which one.  The room was already starting to spin and pulsate around the edges.

"I had an intense urge to go to the crime scenes with all of you so I took some sleeping medicine."  

The effort to form a sentence had made him nauseous.

He flopped forward.  He wouldn't be getting any more of his color coding done tonight. 

Toto's voice was loud and frustrated through the phone, "Find a better solution than that!"

If could think of one I would be doing that, Toto. His thoughts, the room around him, and the noises through the phone blended into one confusing sepia-toned mess.

Huh. Sepia. Could be a good name for the undefined color category.

He wasn't aware of anything after that.

Knight had been itching to reach into his pocket and get a second look at the crumpled paper that had resided there since he'd crammed it in at the second crime scene.  It was a pain, sitting calmly through the discussion of what the other three had found, lying through his teeth to Toto about finding nothing.   Hours after he'd found it, finally alone, he pulled the paper out of his pocket and flattened it out.

I thought I was seeing things back at the park. 

He'd been right in his assessment then, in the two seconds he'd had to stare at the inkbrush drawing before Alyssa had noticed how still he'd gone, before he'd made a split second decision not to get on the wrong side of the most unassuming and most dangerous woman he'd ever met.

He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking at. 

But no, that is NOT a chimera. 

Chapter Text

The world came back to Ron in bits and pieces. A vacant awareness that he was breathing, that he was flopped forward against something warm and smooth.  His arm was aching, something heavy was on it. The smell of the leather of the couch.  Something wet around the side of his mouth touching the couch.

Ew. Drool. 

He sat up and braced himself on the arm that wasn't all pins and needles from being laid on, the room still felt like a carousel around him.  The cat stared at him coolly from Toto's chair, flopped on its side, one paw up as if Ron's waking had disturbed its bath. 

The students. He thought blankly. 

It meant something, but with the fog in his mind he didn't have the meaning to attach to the phrase yet. 

He looked around the room.  The light was gone; through the windows the sky was dark. It clearly had been some time since it had been the grey-purple that he'd last seen through the slats of the blinds.  The room itself was in disarray.  Objects in piles. At least they're organized.  His eyes settled on the jumbled pile of light browns. 

Sepia.

Oh.

He had his meaning, remembered, and looked down at the uncapped syringe he must have dropped on the rug near the couch in his stupor.

That, once again, hadn't been a smart choice.

This certainly hadn't been his intended use when he'd acquired the tranquilizers. 

He hadn't thought about it when he'd nabbed them from the bottom of his closet as he'd fled the apartment, but he'd gotten them so long ago he wasn't even sure they were in date. Each time  he'd needed to use one, he was in such a rush that he hadn't bothered to check. 

... hopefully that won't do anything bad to me if they were out of date...

He tried to remember the toxicology that he'd been taught at Blue. He could probably figure out what the side effects would be from using tranquilizers that were degraded.  Unfortunately, his brain was working about as well as a 12 year old MacBook that had been dropped in honey. 

He sighed.  

I'll just assume these are messing me up. 

He stared at the emptied syringe. 

He'd gotten them to protect Toto.  It sounded ridiculous now and it definitely would have sounded ridiculous to him at the time he'd bought them if his brain hadn't been running entirely on fear.  It was the day after they'd returned from the island observatory. 

Ron had still been shaken by the events at the television studio.  Even though Toto insisted that he could take care of himself.  Even though, in the end, Toto had been completely fine.  Toto had refused to readdress the issue of his near death after returning from the trip and, to present, Ron still wasn't sure if it was because he was avoiding addressing an issue or if he considered the whole event a non-issue.  There had been so much more that had gone on between then and now that in contrast to what had happened over the past 6 months, the near poisoning seemed almost laughable. Almost.

Of course Ron hadn't truly understood the trouble that would be coming for him and Toto at the time, so the terror that had consumed him after Toto's first brush with death made sense. That event had been jarring enough that, for a few weeks, he'd gone completely off the rails. 

The first night after, he'd woken up tangled in his sheets and drenched in sweat. The images that had chased him out of his sleep had been something that didn't bear speaking of.  Certainly not to Toto. And he'd had no one else at the time that he could have told. 

They continued and then didn't let up the whole trip to the island.  The first night home, his brain upped the ante.  The news of the disappearance of the ship with the bodies, the mark that had been placed under Onodera's body.  He'd had confirmation that whatever was coming to him and Toto was going to be a new kind of danger, something he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to bring Toto along for the ride for.  The nightmares had been unlike anything he'd ever experienced that night. 

When he'd jolted awake screaming at 12:30 AM, he'd cursed Grizzly-san's name, rest his soul. If the man hadn't made Toto arrest Ron for the murder, Ron probably never would have found himself in such a starkly familiar and unfamiliar situation. A murder he didn't remember committing yet was the only possible culprit of contrasted against the utter lack of fear he'd had as Toto had taken him away. Without that, he would have never have been able to put a name to what exactly Toto had become to him. It would have been easy for him to cut Toto out of the situation, whether the man liked it or not, if he hadn't realized.  But he had realized that night that, unfortunately, there was nowhere he would be going that Toto wouldn't be following and nowhere Toto could go that he would choose not to follow.  It was bittersweet, something that truly would have made him ecstatic if he hadn't been the kind of person that constantly attracted danger. 

He hadn't had a clue at the time how he could protect Toto, not when the man refused to give up on him.  He was powerless to protect Toto from an unimaginably powerful crime family that seemed to want his head.  He was powerless to protect Toto from the suspect killing instinct that put the man in mortal danger every time he explained the solution to a case Ron solved.  He was also unable to opt out of doing detective work, Toto had made it clear that he wouldn't have it when he knew Ron could do so much good. Between the three issues: the M family, Toto, and his killer instinct, the killer instinct had seemed like the easiest one to push against at the time. 

He trusted Toto.  He wanted to stop the killer instinct before it became a problem.  He'd bought the tranquilizers. The intention had been to sneak them along with him to the next case and talk Toto into testing them on Ron after he'd finished explaining the case. 

There had been a lull in cases after their trip to the island. 

He'd come out of his fear-induced haze before the next case and had the presence of mind to remember that Toto 1. would never agree to something like this and 2. would be offended that Ron even suggested him doing something so risky as testing veterinary grade tranquilizers on Ron.  He'd tucked them far back in the bottom of his closet.  He hadn't thought disposing of them in the trash was safe.  He was embarrassed that he'd come up with what seemed like such a simple idea for controlling the killer instinct. 

It was ironic that months later, Dr. Mofu had told him her solution to the killer instinct and it was near identical except for the addition of a medication for compulsions. The medicines worked fine, if he ignored the side effects and the delirium that followed every dose.  It had been worth it to protect Toto.  The tranquilizers in their box had fallen back into the more irrelevant recesses of his mind after he started his medications.  He'd found a solution that Toto (kind of) approved of, one that truly was the best option until he and Mofu had a better idea of what exactly was wrong with him. 

The tranquilizers had resurfaced in his memory after he'd knocked out the Alliance agents.  He'd nearly torn his apartment apart looking for the bottles of his medications. He didn't have a lot of time and he refused to go without something that could stop his issue.  When he'd realized finding his prescribed medications was going to be a lost cause, he'd grabbed a handful of syringes and vials of the tranquilizer and moved on. 

And that brought him to present.  Three doses used and not one for the purposes of stopping the killer instinct.   Embarrassed, he remembered how upset Toto had sounded as the world had spun out of his awareness.  The two times he'd wanted to leave the safehouse it had been understandable. He didn't particularly like that this was what he'd decided to use the tranquilizers for, but it made enough sense to use them to keep himself out of trouble.  The last dose he used was the one he felt foolish about.  That one had been for an issue that he knew he could deal with without the tranquilizers.  Certainly it was something that was easier to deal with when there was Toto next to him, but it was still something that he'd learned to manage on his own through the years.  There was no doubt in his mind that as long has both sides of his family had surviving members, his life wouldn't be one stress-free enough to get rid of the issue with panic, using something so ill advised as a tranquilizer for that problem was a great way to give himself new problems to deal with. 

His arm no longer had pins and needles. He grabbed the syringe from the floor, scooped the cap off the table with the tip of the needle, and slid it back into place.  Dropped the syringe into the cardboard box he'd stowed the other two used needles in, he'd need to figure out something to do with them later. 

He looked for his phone and found it crammed between two couch cushions. It must have fallen. 

In his call log, the record of his call with Toto, '2:37:08'.  Clearly Toto had tried to wait out the dose Ron had taken and failed.

Almost 2 hours of waiting. 

Something had to be wrong with the dose he'd drawn up when he loaded the syringes.  The other two hadn't kept him down that long.  

His finger hovered over the call button next to Toto's name.  He was hesitating. Toto had been upset when Ron had heard him last, his yelling a kneejerk reaction, something he'd felt so strongly that he hadn't had the time to moderate his tone before it came out.  

Ron already knew that when he picked up the phone, Toto wasn't going to make the way he felt about what Ron was doing to himself Ron's problem. He'd just try to get past it, focus on the case, and things would go normal until something reminded Toto.  If the problem was something that Toto felt he couldn't banter with Ron about, then there would be a pause in the call while Toto thought about what Ron had done and then tucked it back out of his mind again.  Ron never would have realized that Toto held back from expressing his frustration at Ron when it came to serious issues if it hadn't been for Toto's habit of unintentionally speaking his thoughts.  The first time it happened he'd been shocked that Toto had brought up something that upset him so directly and he'd immediately tried to talk through the issue.  Toto had been embarrassed and wanted to drop the issue as soon as it came up. The second time he'd noticed Toto unintentionally airing his grievances over the phone, Ron pretended that he hadn't heard a thing and decided to take Toto's habit for the blessing it was.  How many people out there would kill for the ability to know what exactly was bothering their partner instead of playing guessing games about it?  He'd been handed a map to sort out the things he'd done that had truly hurt Toto and was able to make adjustments that kept him from repeating mistakes, with Toto none the wiser. 

It had been a great system in practice.  He learned about what Toto needed and Toto hadn't had to deal with the insecurity and embarrassment that he seemed to have about asking for things he needed when it was inconvenient. 

It didn't feel like a great system today.

Ron wanted to talk about this. 

Maybe needed to talk about this.

Having to communicate without seeing each other had blunted Toto's ability to read what Ron meant when he said something.  In person, Toto would have noticed the difference between the last dose and the two that came before it.  The mental alarm bells that went off every time Ron did something that pointlessly endangered himself would have activated and it wouldn't have mattered how Toto felt about the issue, he would have dealt with it because it was a problem Ron had.  But Toto was taking everything Ron said at face value.  He'd believed Ron when he said the reason for that dose was him wanting to leave the safehouse.  As long as Toto thought the reasoning for using the tranquilizers was appropriate, he wasn't going to address them with Ron, no matter how uncomfortable leaving the issue alone made him because Toto was perceiving his discomfort as a Toto problem and not a Ron problem. 

Frankly, Ron wanted to think that the last dose of the tranquilizers he'd taken would be the only one that would be taken because of a panic attack.  But he wasn't sure if he believed himself.  He didn't know if he'd be able to drag Toto into yet another conversation that he didn't want to have, just to spring on him that the truth of the situation was actually worse than Toto had assumed. But he wanted Toto to know. At least then there would be someone to hold him back from falling into a habit and going to the extremes he tended towards when left to his own devices. 

He was embarrassed. Mad at himself for the choice he'd made, especially mad that it had worked exceptionally well for stopping his panic in its tracks.   At least if it had gone poorly for him the reasons to avoid the tranquilizers would have been stronger. 

He knew that there was a part of himself wise enough to see the problem he was creating for what it was. He also knew that part of him wasn't going to be loud enough to actually make him tell Toto what was going on, not when there was so much of him that had liked the feeling of letting go of the panic that had nearly frozen him.

When he actually called Toto and spoke to him, they'd be sitting in different parts of the city, both covering something they didn't want the other to know about.  He could already imagine how off the conversation would feel.  The spaces left by them holding back things they didn't want to say would make the whole conversation disjointed, it'd leave Ron feeling like a part of his soul had been knocked out of its place and left a few inches to the left of where it was supposed to be. His hand was hovering over the call button because it was infinitely more comfortable to dread a conversation like that than have to walk away from it feeling as though a part of himself was out of place. 

He and Toto weren't meant to lie to each other.  The nature of their relationship had ensured honesty at the very start. They had needed to tell each other the truth and be on the same page when they committed to putting on an act so that Ron could solve cases.  Honesty had become complicated once Ron realized how much he cared about Toto.  He'd started having things he didn't want Toto to know about: the first few visits to Dr. Mofu's office, the nightmares that he'd started having, how bad the side effects from his medications had been, things that would make Toto worry.  

The muscles along the side of his forearm began to cramp from being held in the same position for so long, pulling him out of the spiral he'd been in. 

That conversation with the students had been enlightening.  Unfortunately, it was enlightening exactly in the way Ron had suspected it would be.  He and Toto needed to talk about it. 

He would be normal.  He wouldn't talk about the tranquilizers.  He already knew Toto wouldn't bring them up. 

The clock on his phone read 10:46. He pressed the call button. 

"Ron?"  Toto sounded tired, not in the way that meant he needed to sleep.

"Hey." 

"I sent the students back to their hotel a while ago." Toto was choosing not to address Ron's most recent dose of tranquilizers, as Ron had expected him to.

Ron tried to push away the weight that had been sitting on him since he'd woken up.  Toto needed to be cheered up.

"Oh? They really went to bed without a fight? I was sure they'd try and bully you into letting them stay up late and eat candy for dinner."

Toto sighed.  Ron couldn't figure out if it was exasperation or the barest amount of amusement that caused Toto to make the noise. 

"You know they bullied the last babysitter so bad they quit over the phone before I even got home.  The one before that wound up getting locked out of the house halfway through the evening and by the time I got back, the kids had gotten their hands on the babysitter's credit card and blown about 50 pounds on pay per view movies"

"Ron" The telltale sound of Toto's voice speaking through the smile Ron had pulled onto his face was exactly what Ron had wanted to hear, "Why do I get the feeling these are coming from someone's personal experience and not your imagination?" 

"I'm telling you, it's the truth.  They're a bunch of little nightmares when they want to be."  Ron added, choosing not to answer Toto's question. 

Toto had started laughing at that.  

"I bet."  He sighed before he went on, "Your poor mother, I understand why she put you in a boarding school those last few years she was responsible for you."

Ron let out a fake gasp of indignation, he managed to ruin the effect by laughing immediately afterwards. 

He'd distracted Toto enough to keep him from one of the long pauses he'd been dreading. Ron felt a little lighter, like he could move again.  He got up from the couch and started fully closing the blinds over the windows.

"So they had to go?" he asked, bringing the conversation back to its original topic.  He crossed the room to hit the light switch next to the staircase.  The cat immediately made a noise of displeasure and jumped off the chair to settle down in the shadows under the coffee table. 

"Less they had to go and more there was nothing left for me to ask them to do."  It wasn't said directly, but Toto implied that he'd been unable to make any more progress with what the students had given him without speaking to Ron first.

Ron took a deep breath in. Having this conversation is just as uncomfortable as I'd thought it'd be.

He pushed through the feeling of discomfort and continued  "What'd they see?  Anything interesting?" 

"That's just the thing!."  Toto complained, "Apparently, they found nothing." 

"Nothing nothing?" Ron echoed

"Nothing nothing." Toto confirmed

Ron had to pause before he could decide what to say next.  That really was unexpected.  No wonder Toto wound up stuck here. Ron didn't particularly have an idea of what the next step was in their investigation at this point. 

"Well Toto, I think you better start giving yourself some more credit." 

Toto grumbled. 
 
"Seriously, maybe we've just found ourselves in a situation where we aren't going to be given clues for this case, maybe Alice is trying to see exactly how much she can starve me of information before it destroys my ability to deduce things.  If four sets of well-trained eyes failed to uncover a single detail that you missed then there was nothing left to be found."

He paused and sat back down on the couch.

Well, that, or there was nothing left to be found by the time the students went through the crime scene.  He decided to keep that comment to himself. 

"Now I just feel stupid."  

"Huh? Toto! What did I just say?" 

Toto ignored Ron and continued "I was the one pushing to keep the students here to help and look where it's gotten us.  Four students put right in Alice's line of fire and no progress to show for it."

Ron wished acutely that he'd gone without the last dose of tranquilizers. Leaving Toto to his own devices for such a stretch of time had clearly given the man too much time to blame himself for what was going wrong in the investigation.

"Okay, lets put that to the side for exactly one second.  Toto.  You went to two crime scenes, relayed information from both crime scenes to me, and managed to do it without missing a single thing, all verified by four incredibly skilled detectives-in-training.  Then you want to call yourself stupid?  Toto, you're turning into the kind of detective you've always wanted to be.  Now, do you want to tell Kawasemi about this or should I?  I think we need to have the two of you compete to solve a case again.

"Ron..."  He was unamused by the direction Ron was trying to pull the conversation in.

"Okay fine, I'll be the one to brag on you then."  Ron let go of the idea at that point, Toto clearly didn't want to hear it today.

"Ron," He sighed and continued, "You were right about sending them home earlier.  Now they're here, in danger without a purpose, and we have no good way of getting them to go back where it's safe."

He really is fixated on this. Has the outcome of the students' work disappointed him so much that he's forgotten he wasn't the only person responsible for letting the students onto the case?

"Toto, you're not the only person that thought they should stay in Japan." 

"You didn't want them helping-" he started.

"Not me! Spitz.  He thought they should stay here too." 

Toto's side of the phone was quiet for a few beats.

"You didn't tell him what we decided?" he almost sounded weak as he asked the question.  Toto didn't expect it either then.  

"I had maybe ten seconds on the phone with him, the entirety of which he spent yelling about the students, before I brought him into the call the students were in so he'd stop trying to blow my ears out.  He wasn't told a thing about what we'd decided before the students got to your apartment." 

"Huh." 

"Yeah.  Honestly I really didn't expect him to tell them to stay."
 
"I was sure you'd gotten him on board before the two of you showed up in the call."  That much had been clear with the way Toto had sounded a moment ago.

"Nope."  Ron was smiling while he shook his head.  How Toto assumed that Ron could persuade someone to agree to a plan like that in seconds was beyond him.  He was a skilled detective, not a magician.  

Toto was quiet. 

The odd behavior from Knight earlier came back to Ron.  The dodging questions.  The information from the alliance that he'd somehow pulled from thin-air on his way to Japan.  The thought made him feel jumpy.  He got up from the couch and started to pace. 

"And really Toto, I think the three of us have far less control over the situation with the students then we'd thought yesterday."

"How so?" 

"We didn't ask them to come over here, Spitz certainly didn't want them to, and yet they showed up anyway."  Ron grimaced as he finished the sentence.  It was a rehash of exactly what they'd talked about yesterday, he was failing to bring up the point he wanted to make. 

"They are stubborn." Toto replied to Ron's obvious statement.

"I don't think that entirely covers what has created this situation."  He turned to make another lap of the room.  He'd give introducing the topic one more shot before he just gave up and said what he thought. 

"Hhmh?"

Oh wait.  There was still information Ron was missing.  He'd only caught a short conversation.  Toto had the benefit of a third interaction with the students.  Certainly there would be more information to be analyzed from Toto.  At this point, he was never going to actually get to talk about what had been confirmed for him earlier in the evening. 

"Before I explain, how exactly were they at the crime scenes?" 

"Marsh and Hutter wound up at the promenade.  They found nothing of note and didn't notice a pattern to the crime scene.  Marsh went on another tangent about how excited he was to be in Japan"

Ron chuckled at that. 

"You know, apparently none of them can read Japanese.  I'd half expected at least one of them to be fluent given how skilled they seem to be at everything else." 

"Well, Blue can't teach everything....  What about Alyssa and Knight?"

"It stayed quiet on their end of the call for most of their investigation, I think they split up a little more than Hutter and Marsh did. They didn't see anything new and couldn't find the picture of the chimera that the suspect had."  

Wow.  The students truly had come up empty handed.  Not even a hunch from them. 

"Knight didn't have any other miraculously accurate Alliance information about the victims?"  The only important piece of information to gather about the student's investigation now that the avenue of new details from the crime scenes had been exhausted. 

"No?" Toto sounded confused at Ron's pointed question. 

The issue that had been grating at his mind since the students had been on the phone finally had its chance to come up.

"The conversation with the students was strange, Toto.  Knight really told you he had some information to share the first time you talked to them?"

"Yes." Toto still sounded confused.  He hasn't figured out why this is important yet. 

"And that was just hours after the second body had been found.  The information he had bothered me Toto.  The timeline we've been given by the students has been all wrong." 

"How so?" 

"You were called to the first crime scene early in the afternoon the day the students arrived.  The victim had perished within an hour of you getting there.  The second body appeared not more than 3 hours later, you investigated that crime scene and then went home late that afternoon.   The students appeared at your apartment less than an hour after you got home and Knight claimed to have relevant information about the case that evening.  But how?  He would have had to see his father's intelligence information to steal information about the murders unnoticed, but he would have been on a plane the entirety of the time that it would have been possible for the Alliance to gather that information.  There hadn't even been a murder when the kids boarded the plane to Japan.  So where did Knight get that information and why'd he lie about how he got it?

"Oh." Ron could tell Toto didn't even know he'd spoken.

"The only thing he could have known at the time they boarded the plane, if he was telling the truth about his information source, would have been that there were four former M family employees that had fled to Japan. That is the only piece of information that he shared that I'm sure the Alliance has known for more than two days at this point.   Everything other than that would have come to light after the first victim appeared."

"Ron? What does any of this mean?"  Toto was starting to sound less confused and more unsettled by Ron's explanation.

"He's lying about stealing the information Toto. He has to be."  

Toto was quiet on the other side of the phone.  Ron let him process for a minute before he continued. 

"Basically Toto, it really didn't matter if we agreed to let the students help or not.  Whether or not all four of them are aware of it, they didn't come here to help us solve the cases.  They were going to be here regardless.  If the cases didn't exist when those students' tickets were booked then we have to assume that they were here for something different."

"They really are with the Alliance then..." 

"Have to be, it's the only explanation that makes sense.  I don't think all of them know it though.  Toto, Marsh clearly is too excited about being in Japan for this to be a serious trip for him, he would be more nervous than this if he had to keep up a lie.  Hutter is too intense, if he knew that solving the cases was secondary to their purpose being here, he wouldn't be acting with half the urgency he's been showing.  Alyssa is unreadable as always.  Knight is the one I'm positive has been in touch with the Alliance regarding this trip." 

"Why would he-?"

"I'm not sure Toto, he doesn't seem enthusiastic about whatever it is he is up to.  In fact, he's been kind of sloppy.  It's unlike a student as smart as him to lie so poorly.  He's relaying to us what the Alliance has found out about the case verbatim, with no regard as to whether it would have been possible for him to know those things if he wasn't being handed the information."

"Hmmm..."

"I think we should assume his father put him up to it, as chairman, he's likely desperate to bring the issue of the branch leader deaths to a close.  Given the lengths they've already gone to, forcing his son to manipulate any possible connections to persons of interest in the case is reasonable."  

"This is bad." 

"In some respects, yes.  In others, not so bad." 

"What exactly is the good side of this, Ron?"  Toto sounded wholly unconvinced by Ron's proclamation that there was something good to come of the Alliance using the students to shadow them. 

"We've got a second group helping us solve an M family case.  Not something we've been able to claim for any prior M family case we've been thrown into.  I imagine that as unenthusiastic as Knight has been about his role as the Alliance's informant, it will be easy to get him to slip up and reveal information about the case that the Alliance is feeding him.  Of course there is still the issue of me having to avoid revealing my location. The stakes are higher now.  If they find me, not only will I be out of the equation, but more than likely our four sets of spare eyes will find themselves on a plane home, effective immediately.  Our hands would be tied at that point."

"Ron.  I don't like this." 

"High risk, high reward, Toto.  It's what you argued yesterday, but instead of just bargaining for some students' help, you've managed to net us information that only the near limitless manpower that the Alliance has could offer."  

He sat back down on the couch.  Voicing his now confirmed suspicions about the students to Toto had calmed him down.

"So what exactly do we do from here?"  Toto had sounded uncomfortable at the idea of him and Ron playing so closely with fire, but must have decided that he wasn't going to push back on the idea at this point. 

"Exactly as we have been when it comes to the case and the students. Except now, of course, we need to pay close attention to anything Knight says. If he doesn't use what he learns from the Alliance to locate clues that he'd be able to claim he found himself, then he'll likely continue to be sloppy enough to reveal the information he's getting regardless."

Ron felt hopeful, the feeling was tempered with the adrenaline of knowing that he and Toto were playing a dangerous game choosing to keep the Alliance so close by continuing with the students.  

At this rate, we might be able to solve this before the fourth victim comes into the picture.  

"Ron." 

"Mhm." 

"Tomorrow it will be 48 hours since the second victim. The first and the second were only a few hours apart"

"It's weird isn't it." 

"If we didn't know there were two more, I'd almost want to believe that figuring out who the perpetrator of the first one was enough for Alice to decide we'd solved it."

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?  Completely unlike the Moriartys though." 

"At this point the whole thing is, isn't it?  We've never had a timeline for one of these stretch out so much." 

"It is odd.  In the past the case was laid out in such a way that time became the most important limiting factor.  The whole series of murders would work like a race against time. This time, not so much."

"The gap between the first two almost felt like a normal M family case.  After is when it started getting weird." 

"I'm tempted this time, Toto, to believe that the other M family cases we solved became easier to solve as time went on, which is why we were given such a time limit.  Maybe this one becomes more difficult as time passes." 

"How could Alice guarantee something like that?" 

Ron sighed.  

I hadn't actually thought about that.

All of the distractions he'd created for himself during the day to keep him from thinking about his newfound solitude had actually been distracting enough to keep his mind off the case.  I really am falling into my old habits...

The idea of verbally taking Toto through his thought process as he worked through the information felt daunting, but this was probably the only chance he had to do something like this, there was still enough of the tranquilizer in him to slow his brain down enough that his mouth might be able to keep up with his thoughts.

"Well Toto, let's start with going over what we know.  The victims were both poisoned.  We have forensics on neither of them.  We know that the second victim appeared to be able to infiltrate a crime scene cleanup crew..." 

He and Toto went back and forth trading details they had about the victims, forensics, the structure of staffing at the Metropolitan police department then bounced ideas about what could have been done to guarantee the loss of evidence as time passed.  The conversation wound and went off on a dozen different tangents before the night became too late and they ended the call. 

Chapter Text

Toto was exhausted. 

He'd been up on the phone with Ron well into the night and he still felt off about the situation with the students.  The mental energy that the 4 new trains of thought he now had constantly running in his head in addition to the ones he normally had were sapping him of energy, even on nights when he got more than 3 hours of sleep.  

When his phone had rung that morning, pulling him from a deep sleep, he'd expected Ron on the other end and hadn't bothered to read the contact before answering.  The rush of adrenaline that had started his heart racing the moment Amamiya's voice yelled through the phone had left him feeling shaky and hollowed out.  He'd been a disorganized mess throwing on his suit before rushing to the crime scene.  He'd almost forgotten Ron's mic and had to go back up the stairs to his unit to grab it before he left.

He'd called Ron as he got out of the subway station nearest the park.  The man was half asleep.   Toto hoped that meant that he wouldn't need a dose of tranquilizers to keep him from running out to see the new crime scene.   Ron somehow stayed calm as Toto gave him a short description of what Amamiya had told him on the phone earlier. 

As he went up the short set of concrete stairs into Mamiana park, Toto wondered if Ron had somehow figured out how to take a dose of tranquilizers discretely, the calm coming from Ron's side of the phone unsettled him. 

When has the man ever been anything but enthusiastic about a crime scene?

He looked at the space in front of him.

Mamiana park is exceptionally small. 

A courtyard-like space around a large fountain took up the third of the park to his left.   The other two thirds of the park to the right were a play area for children.  There was a crowd around one edge of the courtyard. The officers that had already been on scene and some of the crime scene crew surrounded a body. He went to get briefed on the situation.

He'd done his formalities with the two detectives that had been present. They'd handled the preliminaries before the case had been delegated to Toto given its common features with the two he was working on.  Nothing seemed off about the detectives.  After all the talk he and Ron had done last night about the M family possibly infiltrating the Metropolitan police, he felt on edge around any coworker that he hadn't known by name before the string of cases had started.  He looked around the perimeter of the crime scene.  Only the crime scene crew had been present, all of them had their shoe covers on, Toto noted.   They looked to be sweeping the rest of the park for anything of note. 

The two officers moved to leave after Toto assumed leadership of the case.  He took his first opportunity to get a good look at the crime scene as they gave their farewells to the nearby members of the clean up crew. 

He looked down at the victim.

The body laid across the curb between the concrete and the greenery at one edge of the courtyard.  The position looked uncomfortable. 

She was an older woman, salt and pepper hair with a square jaw.  How she could have been one of the M family's henchmen was beyond Toto's understanding, but at this point he didn't question the precious little intel they did have about the cases.   She had dirt under her fingers, torn skin under the nails as well.  Her throat had deep angry scratches.   There was vomit dripping from the leaves of the bush her head rested against onto the dirt beneath.  Her grey hair was damp on one side, as if she had been resting outdoors long enough for the morning dew to fall on her.  She was on one side, one knee bent, the lower leg straight. One hand had been grasping the neckline of the pale purple blouse she had on, there were smudges of dark brown dirt and dried blood left by her fingertips. The second hand was clutched around a branch of the bush.  She had a bag tucked under the arm closest to the ground.

Ron had been quiet on his side of the phone since Toto had entered the crime scene, the lack of response from the man almost made Toto forget he was supposed to be relaying information to him. 

"She's an older woman, body is laid sideways over the edge of the concrete.  She has scratches to the throat, dirt and skin under the nails.  Appears that she did vomit before her death."

Functionally identical to the last two crime scenes. 

"Rigor mortis has set in.  Muscles are stiff enough that it is not possible to remove the tote bag from under her arm.  The other arm is clutched to the neck of her shirt."

The woman's eyes were open, dull.  Toto looked at her.  The first victim's murderer became the second victim.  "Could this woman really be the murderer of the second victim?" 

The two officers that had been on the scene had reported that they were trying to run the information that the woman had on her.  Someone must have had to dig through the bag that was stuck under her arm. 

He took a closer look at the arm.

"There's a pinprick area of brownish red to the back of the right arm"

I'd bet that's where the needle went if there was one this time.  He checked the visible skin on her body for punctures.

"No visible puncture wounds on exposed skin."

That has to be it then. 

One of the members of the investigative team interrupted Toto. 

"We're not getting any hits with her information in the system."

That's not surprising at this point. 

"That's alright, it seems to be a pattern with these cases.  Remind me what happened when the crime was reported."

"Dispatch received a call from a payphone outside of a condominium in Roppongi from an anonymous individual, they reported a non-responsive woman at the park." 

"Payphone in Roppongi?"

"It's the closest publicly available phone, about half a kilometer away, though.   We've sent officers to the location to gather prints and information."

"No interview with the caller?" 

"No, they hung up the phone very shortly after reporting the body, dispatch hadn't even sent an ambulance to the park yet."

"Okay, let me know what the officers there find.  Thank you." 

"Yes, sir."

He turned back to the body. 

The report was strange.  He wondered what Ron thought about what they'd just heard.  The man continued to be silent.  Toto tried shaking off a negative feeling at that, discomfort and irritation were vying for first place in his mind.  What was going on over there? 

The woman's body was stiff, cold to the touch. She had been dead for quite some time.  But the call to emergency services about the body had only been about an hour ago at 5:30 am.  The caller had hung up and presumably left without leaving any information.  Toto didn't want to get too excited by that information, He wasn't sure what to make of it.  It was strange, a break from the pattern of the last two crime scenes.  Why had the person left the phone?  Had they been involved in some way that made them guilty? If they were, why had they waited so long to call in the body?  Had they stayed with the body until they left to call emergency services?  Why? 

He'd been anxiously mulling over the idea for some time before he'd realized he'd been frozen in place.   When he looked around, a few of the closer crime scene crewmembers were staring at him, they seemed to have taken notice of his agitation.

Ron had been quiet on the other side of the phone.  There was none of the snoring he'd done the last time he'd taken a dose of the tranquilizers.  Hopefully that means he isn't using them today. 

He wanted to tell Ron what exactly he had just been thinking about, but the park was too small for him to be able to step away to talk to Ron directly. 

The other side of the call had been quiet since he'd gotten on to the scene, it was starting to make Toto nervous.

He took a step back and rounded to the other side of the woman's body. He finally noticed the crest. 

"On the concrete curb about 1.5 meters from the woman there is a crest marked in white paint.  It appears to have been spraypainted using a stencil, the edges of the image are uneven in some places." 

He didn't bother laying down next to the body like Ron had insisted he do at the last two crime scenes, if Ron wanted him to do it, the man was going to have to speak up and tell him to. 

The officer from earlier returned, "The team that was sent to the payphone turned up several prints, some more recent than others.  We've been running them, all have matches except for one so far, would you like to have officers attempt to contact the matches?"

Toto nodded and the officer excused himself. 

Well. 

He hadn't wanted to say what he was thinking, but it probably would be a waste of manpower to locate the owners of the prints that had matches.  More than likely the single unidentifiable set of prints belonged to the mystery caller given the precedent that had been set with the other victims. 

Under his breath he addressed Ron directly.

"It almost sounds like our third perpetrator stuck around long enough to report the body.  They may have left prints at the payphone that called in the body." 

He expected something from Ron at that. 

The phone was still quiet. 

This is getting beyond weird.  

Toto pushed back the feeling he had that something was off. There was nothing he could do to check on Ron at the moment anyway.

He set into doing the work that came with a new case.  Delegating evidence collection, reviewing crime scene images as they were taken to ensure all angles of the scene were caught, collecting samples of the vomit for forensics to run tox scans on, starting to fill in the preliminary information for the paperwork that the crime scene would create.  A few hours later, all the information that the scene required had been taken, the body was taken away by an ambulance to await forensics.  Toto left the park.  Ron had been silent the whole time at the scene. 

Toto texted the students the name of the new location and a very brief description of the scene so they could do their own walk through, he included instructions to check the payphone.  He would have had Ron call them to tag along, but the man was unresponsive. 

Toto almost wanted to make a stop at the second-hand store to see exactly what was going on with Ron. He held himself back, there was no telling if he had a shadow at the moment or if the students were close enough to accidentally run into him on the way. 

"Okay Ron, I'm headed into the station now, so I'll catch you when I'm off work.  Let me know if the students notice anything new.  I'm going to see if Amamiya will let us push through those first two victim's forensics now that we have a new development."

It felt pointless to give Ron a signoff when he was sure the man couldn't hear him, wherever he was or whatever it was that he was doing.   There was an empty feeling that he got holding one sided conversations with Ron at the crime scenes.   It was so different than having the man there, making what appeared to be more trouble than he was worth while he dragged Toto from evidence point to evidence point until a solution to the crime had been found.   It had been uncomfortable to end the call with someone who couldn't answer the last two times and this time felt no better. 

He hung up the phone and hoped the man would call him back. 

Back at the station, Toto had been able to speak to Amamiya about the cases.  With the appearance of the newest victim, she was willing to pull some strings within the forensics department to get the first two victims pushed into the scheduled autopsies for the day.  Toto was sure his request was more than reasonable at this point, that didn't prevent Amamiya from looking absolutely murderous upon having to concede to his request. 

She really does hate me.  He thought as he left her office. 

There was an oppressive feeling in the air that lifted as he closed the door to the room. 

Is it considered bribery to talk Ron into coming over here to deliver sweets to her once this is all over?  I feel like it really would help with that deep seated hatred she has for me...

He mulled it over as he made his way back to his cubicle. 

Maybe it would have a net effect of nothing...  She'd probably forget that I was the one asking Ron to bring them for her...

The idea of seeing Amamiya fawn over Ron was making him feel awkward, there was a whole can of worms that he didn't want to open by thinking too deeply about the dynamic there.  He shook his head and put it out of his mind. 

Back at his desk, he looked at the near empty in-basket with dismay.  He'd been hoping for something to distract him while he waited on forensics results and whatever new information the students might send to him.  That was the issue with having nothing to do outside of work now that Ron was effectively on house arrest, he was becoming too efficient at getting things done. Two forms to sign and file and nothing else to do for the cases he had open but to wait.  There was nothing to use to cover up the lingering discomfort he had about Ron's silence on the phone earlier. 

He looked around the office for any occupied desks with overloaded in-baskets.  At this point he was seriously considering taking up a collection of unwanted cases from his coworkers to help fill the hours he was going to be stuck in the office.  He'd been making his way across the room to the desk of a rookie who clearly seemed to be in over his head with the types of cases Toto used to be overrun with when he was struck by a thought that he'd wished had come to him much earlier.

He made a beeline back to his desk to grab his phone and took the elevator up to the roof.  

He hit dial. 

What time was it there?  

9:30 am here, 1:30 am there.  Oh.  Spitz is going to kill me. 

Oh well. 

"Hello" 

"Hey Spitz."

"Tototo what is going on?"  The man was unamused.

"Um.... Quick question."

"Hhhhhm?"

"You still have bugs on me right?" 

"Uh.  Yes."  That seemed to wake the man up a little bit, he sounded nervous.  There was a beat and then Spitz kept going. "I can take them offline if that's what you're asking.  I know you're aware of them, but I didn't really know if you were okay with them being on." 

"No that's not what I'm asking about. I thought they would be on.  With how useful they've been before it doesn't really matter how I feel about them." 

"Uh. Okay. What's the question?"

"Do you have any on Ron?"

"Tototo, what's going on?"  It was less irritation and more concern in Spitz's voice now. 

"Um.  Funny story.  You know about Ron's tranquilizers?" 

"His WHAT?" 

Oh shit. Seriously? 

"He's been using tranquilizers on and off since he went into hiding." 

"Totomaru.  What the hell for?  Where did he get them?" 

"Apparently to keep himself from leaving the safehouse when I go to crime scenes.  Where he got them, I was actually hoping you would know more about that than me, clearly you don't." 

"You let that man get away with too much." 

"Yes, but that's besides the point.  We had a new crime scene today, I call him when I go to them.  The last two locations, he'd take a dose of tranquilizers and be half conscious the whole time doing deductions over the phone.  Today I got to the crime scene and he just went dead silent.  He normally snores even when the tranquilizers have got him fully asleep." 

"What on earth is going on over there?"

"No offence Spitz but at this point I thought you'd be clued into the situation given that I know you have the potential to hear every call that goes through my phone." 

"Tototo, I can hear literally anything that the phone microphone is capable of picking up, 24/7."  Toto choked at that. "However I know better than to leave it on!  Believe me, learned that one the hard way a long time ago" Toto wanted the ground under him to swallow him up.   He hoped desperately that this was a mistake Spitz had made listening to someone else's bugged phone, not his.  He was too scared to ask what Spitz might have heard.  

"How do you manage to conveniently catch relevant information through my phone then?"

"I only listen when Ron tells me to?  He's got a knack for knowing when the two of you are about to get into trouble." 

"Oh. I'm assuming he's been keeping you in the dark on this then?" 

"Sounds like it." 

It was starting to make sense why Ron had made Toto start carrying around a mic.  It must have went direct to him without Spitz being involved. Sneaky, sneaky Ron.  

"Um.  I'm having trouble knowing where to start on explaining this to you then." 

"You know what, I think I know enough as it is.  I can start listening in for some context on what's going on if you want me to." 

"If it's not too much trouble, it might save some time. I know you have classes to teach too, so don't go out of your way or anything." 

"Right, I could just have my setup record y'all's calls." 

"At this point, I think I'd be okay with that until we have these cases solved." 

"Okay sounds good"  Spitz yawned.

"Wait, before you go.  Do you have bugs on Ron?"

"Um.... I think just have some malware on his phone that I haven't activated." 

"Look I just want to make sure he didn't keel over dead this morning or something.  I can't go over to the safehouse right now, I have a couple trackers from the alliance on me" 

He left out his and Ron's suspicions about the students.  On certain points he agreed with Ron, the less Spitz knew about some of this stuff, the better. At the very least, the lack of knowledge would protect Spitz from the Alliance in case they became any more desperate for information. 

"It's not going to be able to show me anything that his phone has done earlier, just from now onward."

"Oh" 

"Just send him something that he's not going to be able to ignore, we'll be able to see that he used his phone and then you'll know he's not dead." 

Toto froze. Oh.  Spitz has definitely made the mistake of overhearing something through my phone then...

"Has he gotten pictures of the crime scene from you yet?  You know he'll check those immediately if he hasn't gotten them."

Spitz hadn't meant what Toto had thought he'd been implying.  He buried his face in his hands for a moment.  I need to get my mind out of the gutter.  It's only been a few days... 

He composed himself.

"Right, let me send those over." 

Toto pulled a couple photos from the morning's crime scene from the photo gallery on his phone and texted them to Ron. 

"And ... bingo. Congrats Tototo! He's alive!" Spitz's attempt at enthusiasm was tempered by the tiredness he was unable to cover up.  "I'm going back to bed now. Bye" 

"Thanks Spitz"  The call cut off. 

Toto was relieved, but the call had left him feeling off balance and exhausted.  He was suddenly grateful for the sparse in-basket that sat waiting at his desk.  He needed a break.  He got back on the elevator to go back to the office. 

Chapter Text

Ron had been in the middle of trying to break down the door of the cruise ship auditorium when the buzzing noise started.  

A repetitive dzzzzt, dzzzt, dzzzt.

That's new.

He took a look around the auditorium, but couldn't find the source of it.

 The room was empty, but the pressure was still there as if the 200-odd passengers from the cruise were begging him to get them out before they were poisoned.  Behind him on the stage was the stupid teddy bear that Milo Moriarty's voice inhabited.  None of his suspects were present.  Just him, the gun in his hand, and the door in front of him.  He was certain that Toto was behind the door. Just as he had been that day, tied up in such a way that he'd be dead as soon as a bullet passed through the lock. Milo was once again trying to pressure him into shooting the door open.  That dizzy-sick feeling of fear was taking over and clogging up the parts of his brain capable of making plans and solutions.

The strange buzzing noise was getting louder.  

He was losing focus on the wood panel door in front of him.  

I can't do it.

I won't be able to solve this in a way that keeps Toto alive.

Not alone, not like this.

Ron was choking back a sob when he turned back to the stage. The entire room started to shake with the buzzing noise. Milo's teddy bear had broken loose from the string that held it to the rafters above the stage and was jolting across the stage with each new wave of the droning like a ringing phone that had been left on a table. 

A phone? 

Ron woke up with a gasp and sat up. He felt like he was going to be sick.  It had been weeks since he'd last had that nightmare. But this time... it was weird.  What was that buzzing noise? 

His racing thoughts slammed to a halt when he realized that the buzzing noise hadn't disappeared with Milo's teddy bear and the auditorium. 

For one gut-twisting moment he wondered if he was still in a dream. Then, he realized that the buzz sounded familiar.  The ringer on his cellphone. 

I'm getting a call. 

He tried to catch his breath.  No one was dying. No gun, no Milo, no auditorium.

I'm just getting a call. 

He grabbed for the phone and laid back down as he swiped the screen to answer it.  

"Ron?"  Toto sounded stressed, a little breathless like he was rushing while walking somewhere.

Something in Ron's chest loosened hearing Toto's voice. It didn't matter how many nightmares he'd had about Toto dying only to wake up and find the man alive. The feeling of relief he got knowing Toto was fine overwhelmed him every single time. 

"Morning Toto".  His voice sounded rough when he spoke.  He hoped Toto would mistake the emotion in it for sleepiness.

Ron tried to hold his breath to keep Toto from hearing how ragged it was. It was uncomfortable.

He hit mute on his phone so he could go back to breathing again without Toto getting worried. 

"Alice's third victim just showed up, I got the call a little over 20 minutes ago, I'm headed there now."  

Huh... another body...

Ron should have felt excited at the prospect of new information for the case.  He didn't.  He was coming off the shaky feeling that the nightmare left him with.  He was exhausted, shirt sticking to his back, the blankets over his futon looking as though he'd been trying to fight with them before he woke up. He wasn't particularly interested in hearing about a death at the moment.  

He wanted a few minutes where he could just feel like he and Toto were going to be okay.

That want would have to join the list of things that Ron would be deprived of this week. He and Toto weren't okay.  They were smack in the middle of a string of cases that would more than likely end with one or both of them in mortal danger.  

And the cases are progressing again if we have victim number 3. 

Ron drew in a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before he sat up and unmuted his phone.  

For a brief moment, a strange thought flickered across his mind.

What would have happened if I'd never wanted to do detective work in the first place?

The question was off, as if the idea of him not doing detective work was wrong on a molecular level.  If there was an answer to the question, it was outside of the bounds of things that Ron could compute. Ron quickly extinguished the thought, the idea that it had even crossed his mind left him unsettled.

"What do we know so far Toto?" He tried to keep the tiredness out of his voice when he asked.   

"Another suspected poisoning at a public park.  This one at Mamiana park, in Minato, in a mostly residential area.  The body was found early this morning and was called in. They did find Alice's crest at the scene, the case is being transferred to me."

Ron had muted the phone while Toto was speaking so he could try to breathe again.  He still sounded rough, bad enough that Toto would notice and ask about it if he wasn't muted.  He tried running a hand through his hair. It stuck.  His hair was damp with sweat and his fingers caught on tangles. 

He sighed and then unmuted his phone. 

"You got your mic on you Toto?" He hit mute.

 He was having trouble finding things to say - couldn't sort out how to get rid of the stilted silence on the line between his questions. That bone-deep feeling of wrongness from the nightmare and from the rogue thought that it had inspired hadn't yet faded.  Even trying to hold a conversation was sapping his energy. From Toto's description there was no doubt that this victim was Alice's work. What could there be left to say? That he wasn't enthusiastic about the prospect of another victim? Ron was certain that the awkward silences were bothering Toto, but his mind remained stubbornly blank of any statements that could be considered a useful addition to the call. 

"Yeah. I'll switch over to it once I get to the scene." 

Unmuted. "Alright."  Muted. It's a bit like a walkie-talkie.  Ron found the idea.... nostalgic.

Maybe that would fix things. If I found this case fun...

It was so wrong for a case, especially one as convoluted as this, to be anything but fun for Ron.  

It wasn't a matter of the stakes of the situation either. Until it had become a worst case scenario, the cruise had been exhilarating, as were the Tokyo serial murders. 

There's something wrong with me, I shouldn't feel like this...

What is it that I'm missing? What is it that I've broken this time?

Frustration, exhaustion, the burned-through, hollowed-out feeling he'd been unable to shake. Those weren't right. Ron was doing something that he was made for. Something he'd dreamed of. Something he'd been willing to give up near everything else for. Even these circumstances, less-than-ideal as they were, still constituted a dream of his. 

Well.... not his. 

A much younger version of himself. 

Ron had been an intelligent child. The things he'd learned before his father's death had left him with a fascination in crime and solving crime.  His mother, despite her disinterest in becoming involved in the detective world again, had supported Ron's interests.  She'd stocked the shelves in their home with nonfiction: encyclopedias, case studies, textbooks, historical texts, instructional guides. Those things Ron had consumed voraciously, tearing through the texts and integrating that information into his understanding of the world at breakneck speeds. His mother scrambled to keep up with it, constantly needing to refresh the stock of reading materials for Ron.  By the time he'd reached middle school his mother had been forced to give up. Ron had already read through university-level material, so she'd cut a deal with the library at a nearby university and Ron had been allowed to borrow journal articles to his heart's content.  Ron had been vocal about his non-fiction reading, this was something he took great pride in, something he enjoyed being able to talk to his mother about.

That hadn't been the only type of books that his mother had stocked the shelves with. There'd been fiction too. Detective stories, crime novels, a surprising amount of noir (though perhaps in hindsight, those hadn't been meant for him, given that the bookshelves were for the household, not necessarily just him), and mystery stories that were for children.

By the time Ron had reached the age of 8, he'd decided that he was too grown up to read fiction anymore.  The stories had no bearing on what he'd need to know when he was going to be a detective, not the way nonfiction did.  He wasn't interested in reading anything that didn't serve a purpose.  He'd told his mother as much too, in the hopes that doing so would increase the rate at which new nonfiction texts would appear on the shelves. At that point, he was running low on new reading material at an alarming rate.  However, the fiction remained on the shelves. At first it had irritated Ron that his mother had stubbornly refused to remove it.  Certainly, there were parts of the stories he enjoyed, but he'd read them all and had no interest in rereading them.  Ron maintained a disinterest in fiction for years.

That facade cracked about 4 years before he'd started at Blue.  He'd been feeling... lonely.  He'd never really wanted to relate to his peers, talking to his mother and teachers had always been enough for him.  Even then, Ron didn't want to spend much time with peers, he knew there wasn't much he'd be able to talk about with them.  Ron felt that he'd be bored, any topic that would interest him would be far out of a peers' depth.  And yet... Ron wanted a friend, despite how ridiculous he found that concept to be.  The idea of exposing himself to that sort of ordeal was not something he desired, certainly not with the set of peers he'd found himself surrounded by in upper elementary school. So he'd compensated; cracked back open the novels he'd vowed he wasn't interested in.  He kept it to himself.  His mother didn't need to know that there were some stories from the collection on the shelf that he'd read again on occasion. Ron found himself embarrassed that he was willing to waste time on something so trivial when he had a bank of information to consume in the nonfiction texts on the shelf below. Reading novels wasn't him, wasn't consistent with what Ron had always told himself was important. 

It was okay to read about friendship and partnerships in his detective novels, Ron had argued to himself (he argued with himself often when it came to the topic of the novels).  Somehow those characters made it work, having the intellectual capacity that Ron so admired while managing relationships with "normal" people.  He felt that maybe it was something he could make work... eventually. He'd already heard about Blue from his mother and there was a possibility that someone there would be able to keep up, wouldn't find themselves completely out of their wheelhouse the moment Ron opened his mouth. 

He chose to be patient in the meantime and got by reading his stories when he didn't think his mother was looking. There'd always been parts of the novels that he'd found particularly exciting (loathe as he was to admit it) things the characters did that he really wanted to try out.  He'd found the concept of a walkie-talkie enchanting.  He wanted a set of them, they seemed to be useful for stakeouts and other more exciting parts of detective work.  There was the issue of who would be on the other end to talk to... Ron didn't have a friend and didn't want one. The walkie-talkies found their way onto his very first bucket list- Things I want to try when I get to Blue- a document that he'd been embarrassed to write to the point that he'd used a cipher to make it unreadable to anyone else. 

He'd never gotten around to trying them out at Blue, as he'd never gotten around to making a friend there.

This is basically a walkie-talkie... 

I'm using it to do detective work too...

This should be exciting.

It wasn't. 

Going into a new crime scene and this is what has my attention...

He shook his head at himself.

Ron had learned to acknowledge the benefits of making the most out of any entertainment he could glean from the situation he found himself in.

He was just having difficulty finding entertainment in anything about today.

Ron eyed the box of vials and syringes that he kept on the table.   If he needed a dose he'd have to draw it up now.   He thought about it. It was unappealing.

Too tired? or am I just certain I've already gone through the worst stress that today has in store?

His body felt like he'd done a marathon overnight.  There's no risk of me running off to a crime scene today. 

He knew he probably needed to ask Toto questions to get more detail about what they were headed into, but it was early, he'd finally gotten his lungs to start acting normal again, and his mind was still fairly blank barring the echoes of the nightmare he'd just gotten out of.

He set his phone to the side, mustered the energy to get up.

He started looking for his earbuds.  He'd need to be able to hear Toto as he went through the crime scene, that was non-negotiable. He also really needed to get a shower and a change of clothes, and probably some breakfast in him.  At the moment he didn't exactly feel human.  The idea of having to put getting dressed and washed up on hold to listen wasn't appealing.  He'd found the earbuds and connected them to the call.  He left his phone on the futon and crossed the room to go digging in the bag of clothing Toto had dropped off for him a few days ago.  There's got to be something for me to change into. 

He'd been putting off laundry. 

Pretty dumb, now that I think about it.  Exactly what else do I have to fill my time right now?

He found a set of clothing he hadn't worn yet and slung it over his shoulder.  As he left the room, he looked at the phone lying on the futon.  The screen was timed out.

The call should be set up in a way that I don't need to bring it.

He went down the stairs to the restroom on the lower floor of the store and started the shower. 

He took a moment to listen to Toto's end of the call closely for a second.  It was still fairly quiet, the occasional sound of a car's engine going by.  He's still not at the crime scene, I should have a moment to knock this out before he gets there. 

He got under the spray of the shower and washed his hair and body quickly.  These aren't waterproof earbuds either are they?  Huh.  Let's hope nothing goes wrong with this then.

He'd shut the water off and had taken a towel to his dripping hair by the time Toto spoke again, "Okay Ron, I'm just getting to the park, so I'm switching over to my mic now."

"Ten-Four, Toto" Ron said in the worst American accent he could muster.  He was having entirely too much fun for someone that had very much woken up on the wrong side of the bed. The shower had him feeling a little more awake and a little more like a person, pretending his phone was a walkie-talkie had taken him back to the old cop shows he'd watched as a kid.  He'd expected some kind of reaction from Toto at the odd turn of phrase, he was fairly certain the man wasn't familiar with North American ten-codes. Toto was quiet, apparently he'd written the statement off as one of Ron's eccentricities and kept moving. 

Oh well. 

There was quiet on Toto's end of the call for a moment and then dull thuds that he assumed was the sound of Toto's shoes against concrete, followed by a quiet noise of surprise. He wondered what Toto had seen. 

He brushed his teeth and then got dressed.

Toto was still on the move, Ron could tell that much from what he heard, there had been the faint noise of running water, that gradually got louder and then became quieter again.  A fountain that Toto walked past?  He could hear a few quiet voices somewhere near Toto, but not addressing him directly. 

"Detective Isshiki?" a voice said. 

The sound of shoe covers crinkling against concrete as the voice approached Toto.  

"Yes, that's me" Toto's voice sounded louder and deeper than normal through the mic he'd tucked somewhere on his body.  

A quieter, closer voice said, "Shoe covers?" 

"Oh Thanks!" said Toto.

A loud crinkle as Ron assumed Toto grabbed the offered covers.  More crinkling and a quiet grunt, he could imagine Toto bending down to put them over his shoes. 

"I'm Officer Ito, I've been told we're passing this case off to you?" 

"Uh, yes." 

Officer Ito continued, "It's a disturbing one. She looks to have died sometime last night.  We got the report in this morning.  There's that weird symbol near the body too.   Detective Sato over there was assigned this with me initially, I was under the impression that the symbol was just graffiti, but he tells me he thinks it could be related to the body." 

"There's been one at the other scenes, so I'd argue it's related."

"The other scenes?" 

"Um... yeah.  Amamiya-senpai's having me pick this one up because I have two other cases in my docket that are almost identical, same symbol, similar appearances of the bodies, all found at public parks." 

"Oh." Officer Ito, as he'd introduced himself, sounded unsettled.  Ron thought nothing strange of it, the man clearly had been uncomfortable with the presence of one dead body with a mysterious symbol, the knowledge that there were two others didn't seem like it would go over well with him. 
"Let's go over and talk to Detective Sato, he's been having some of the men run the victim's information.  He's got a better handle on the situation than I do." 

The sound of two sets of covered feet against pavement, the droning conversation that had been ongoing in the background became louder.

Ron went back upstairs to the kitchenette off the loft and popped open the fridge.

"This is Detective Isshiki" Officer Ito said in his earbuds.

"Detective Sato" A new voice spoke. 

"Nice to meet you." responded Toto. 

He eyed the contents of the fridge, thought about having to split his attention between the crime scene and cooking and considered skipping actual food entirely and just calling a pack of brown sugar syrup breakfast.  His stomach made an offended noise. 

Huh. I guess that's no to brown sugar syrup for breakfast. 

Ron pulled some eggs out of the fridge, collected a bowl, some chopsticks, and a pan, started the burner as Detective Sato began to explain the crime scene through his earbuds, "We've started gathering some preliminary evidence, put most of it on hold once we heard we'd be handing the case off, hope you don't mind."

"It's no trouble, I appreciate what you've done so far.  Is there anything you can tell me that you all have gathered?" Toto asked. 

"The body was called in around 5:30 on a payphone, she'd been described as non-responsive, so emergency medics arrived first. We weren't far behind once it had been determined that she was deceased.  We did interview the medical team, they're over there still in case you would like further information from them, but they didn't report seeing any bystanders at the park at the time and the payphone she was called in on is some distance away."

Ron was half listening.  Most of this was routine, did he really need to devote his attention to what Detective Sato had to say when the majority of the things he'd need to know would be coming out of Toto's mouth? At the moment his brain power was focused on the omelet he was working on.  He cracked eggs, beat them smooth with the chopsticks, mixed some salt into the eggs, considered the consequences of adding brown sugar syrup to the eggs before deciding he'd probably be able to live with them and dumped a generous amount in. 

He thought about the noise he'd been generating with his cooking.

I don't want ask right now because Toto's in the middle of a conversation, but I hope all of this isn't too distracting...  

The thought stuck in his mind for about two seconds before he thought about how limited his ability to distract Toto was at the moment.  Ron's ASMR cooking radio show/podcast? doesn't hold a candle to the time I was a puppeteer wizard, or a rabid fan of a psychic, or ... what had I called it again?... a piggy bank inspector?

Toto's probably relieved then.  Me making breakfast is probably the least of his worries when it comes to crime scene distractions... 

"So no witnesses" stated Toto plainly. Ron was pulled back to the conversation at hand. 

"None we are aware of" Officer Ito said. 

"Except for the person who called in the body,  we haven't been able to interview them yet." Detective Sato added. "We've got a couple officers headed to the payphone now in case we can get some information on the person that reported the body.  As for everyone else, we have the crew sweeping the park for any evidence that isn't immediately near the body, a few officers going around to nearby residences to ask about anything locals may have seen, and we did manage to get some identification information from the victim, so we are trying to run that.  She appears to be a foreigner, so we'll see if that goes anywhere." 

Ron mixed in the seasonings he'd added to the egg mixture.   The eggs went from a rich orangey-yellow to an off-brown that looked that it would match well with the growing stack of sepia objects on the other side of the loft.   Huh. Perhaps it was a better idea to leave the brown sugar syrup to be a topping.  No trouble, as long as it tastes good. 

Toto's voice pulled him back out of his musings about making a perfect brown sugar omelet. "Well you've been very thorough!" Toto sounded relieved.  Clearly the work the two had started had significantly cut down on what Toto would need to organize.  "I'm sorry that this has probably kept you both late, I appreciate your work. I can take things from here." 

"Thanks Detective Isshiki, we'll be taking our leave then." 

Two sets of foot covers moving away, a few quiet farewells in the background. 

Ron looked back down at the egg mixture and stifled a giggle.  Oh my god if Toto could see this.  He'd have a conniption fit.  The utter confusion and dismay with which Toto regarded Ron's brown sugar obsession would be out in full power if he had a clue of was Ron had done to the omelet he was creating. 

On the other side of the phone, Toto was blissfully unaware of the culinary sins taking place at the safehouse.  There was the crinkle of his shoe covers for a few seconds as if he'd taken a few steps, then it was quiet. 

Ron let the egg mixture sit and set the pan on the burner to heat. 

There was a pause of a few minutes while the pan got hot.  The only sounds Ron heard through his earbuds were Toto's steady breathing, the faint sound of running water in the background, and the occasional distant comment from someone on the investigative team. 

"Toto if you're waiting on some direction I'm sure you already know what I'm about to suggest you do."  Ron was curious as to what the crime scene was like, he was almost awake enough now to feel impatient for information. 

Toto was quiet on the other end of the call.  Ron took pause at that then thought about how close the other members of the crime scene crew seemed to be, even as they did their own work. 

The park is too small? 

He won't be able to talk to me at all without someone noticing will he? 

Ron sighed.  This day just became a lot less fun... 

He dumped the egg mixture into the hot pan and scrambled it for a few seconds before he cut off the heat. He kept mixing them until there was only a little liquid left in the pan before he spread the partially scrambled eggs into a layer and let them mostly solidify over the residual heat in the burner. 

He'd turned the near perfect (slightly discolored) omelet out onto a plate and was trying to draw a cute picture on it with some more brown sugar syrup by the time he finally heard Toto speak again. 

"She's an older woman, body is laid sideways over the edge of the concrete.  She has scratches to the throat, dirt and skin under the nails.  Appears that she did vomit before her death."

The tone he spoke in was a little different than the one he'd use when he didn't realize he was talking.  This was intentional, he was faking talking to himself to communicate with Ron.  Good job Toto, he thought has he made his way down the stairs from the loft with his breakfast.  Clearly Toto had sorted out what would and wouldn't call attention to himself in front of the crime scene crew. 

Dirt and skin under the nails...

Wait.

What had he asked Toto about the second victim? 

He dropped his plate on the counter downstairs near the register and ran up the stairs to his phone, exiting out of the screen the call was displayed on to pull up his texts. 

'Has forensics brought anything back on the victims yet?  Anything on the nails, shoes, skin breaks on victim 2?'

Nails, shoes, skin breaks on victim 2.

Victim 2 had bothered him. 

Toto mentioned the dirt under the nails when he'd been at the second crime scene. 

The man had deep scratches around the neck, like every other victim, but Toto hadn't mentioned the skin under the nails. 

Ron hadn't told Toto specifically that he found it strange that victim 2 hadn't had broken skin under the nails, so it's not like Toto had been reminded that it was something he'd need to note with following victims. 

Victim 3 had dirt and skin under the nails. 

This implied that Toto had looked for skin under the nails of victim 2 and hadn't noticed any. 

What put the scratches on victim 2?

Ron was intrigued. 

The apathy and fatigue that had weighed him down since he'd woken up this morning was lifting.  He'd stumbled upon something interesting, but wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to make of it.  His breakfast was probably getting cold downstairs.  He squared away his questions about the scratches to be brought up a little later and went back down to sit at the stool near the register to eat.  He left his phone on the futon. 

Toto continued with his observations, "Rigor mortis has set in.  Muscles are stiff enough that it is not possible to remove the tote bag from under her arm.  The other arm is clutched to the neck of her shirt." 

Rigor mortis.

She's been dead for some time then. What were the numbers?  At least three? four hours? 

A hand clutched to her shirt? It had been like that since she died?  Had she died with muscle convulsions or had it been pain that had her tightening her grip like that? 

Huh.  Interesting. His stomach growling cut off his internal monologue about the woman's last moments.  He cut a bite sized piece from the light brown omelet.  The brownish color of the egg itself was unappealing, the caramelized golden brown crust that the brown sugar seemed to have given the omelet was very appealing.   He took a bite. 

It.... tastes like... French toast? 

That hadn't been what Ron expected at all when he'd added the brown sugar syrup to the eggs.

It's kind of good. 

He continued eating.

The next time he spoke Toto's voice switched from his pseudo-speaking his thoughts voice to his actual one, "Could this woman really be the murderer of the second victim?" 

Ron smiled at that. Toto is so much better at recognizing patterns compared to the first few cases we'd worked together.  He'd considered the same thing. There is the possibility that the third victim was the murderer of the second, given that the second had very likely been the first's murderer.  It's an impressively efficient way for the M family to tie up loose ends.  

The alliance information that Knight had given them complicated that way of perceiving the murders though.  He and Toto had well established that these murders were the work of Alice. If they weren't, then they were a very skillfully done copycat created by someone involved enough with the M family to understand what a string of cases produced by Alice would look like.   The Alliance was under the impression that the three victims and the fourth potential victim were former M family members that had fled the M family when Alice came into power.   

The issue: If he and Toto were right about the victim of one murder being the perpetrator of the murder before and they were right about these cases being set in motion by Alice, then there was the issue of how Alice was motivating the perpetrators/victims to do her bidding.  They were on the outs with the M family after Alice became the head of the family.  In that sense, they would owe her no loyalty.   It would not be possible for her to order them to act.  She had something else that motivated them.  Blackmail? Threats?  What was it about the information she had that would drag them directly to the crime scenes and have them enact murders on one another? Was she impersonating someone else, making them believe that they were acting under someone else's orders? 

"There's a pinprick area of brownish red to the sleeve on the back of the right arm."

Ron's train of thought stopped abruptly, he almost choked on the bite of omelet in his mouth before he cleared his throat. 

"Toto! Are you suggesting what I think you are?" 

Another injection.  He's found an injection site on the third victim.   

The chopsticks he'd been using to eat dropped onto the plate, forgotten.

Ron hated being apart from Toto. He did. But there was something so exciting about getting to see exactly what Toto was capable of on his own.  It was too easy for Toto to take a back seat on his own cases when Ron was right there and being apart like this was letting Ron really see how much Toto had grown as a detective over the past year. 

He's incredible.

Ron had to cover his mouth.  He was going to wind up saying something that would have Toto blushing and stuttering at his crime scene if he didn't. 

There'd been rustling on Toto's side of the call for the past few seconds.  It finally ceased. 

"No visible puncture wounds on exposed skin." 

Ron dropped off the stool and had to curl up into a ball on the floor for a moment. He was too proud, he needed to calm himself down before he started acting out. 

The sound of approaching shoe covers came through the earbuds. 
 
"We're not getting any hits with her information in the system." it was the voice of an officer that Ron didn't recognize.  Not one that had talked to Toto earlier. 

"That's alright, it seems to be a pattern with these cases." Ron covered his mouth again, there was a swell of pride pushing on the inside of his chest. 

That's my Toto. 

Toto continued, "Remind me what happened when the crime was reported." 

"Dispatch received a call from a payphone outside of a condominium in Roppongi from an anonymous individual, they reported a non-responsive woman at the park." 

An anonymous individual? 

Ron sat up.  I passed over that information earlier, didn't I? 

"Payphone in Roppongi?" Toto questioned.

"It's the closest publicly available phone, about half a kilometer away, though.  We've sent officers to the location to gather prints and information" replied the officer.

"No interview with the caller?"

"No, they hung up the phone very shortly after reporting the body, dispatch hadn't even sent an ambulance to the park yet." 

Okay, let me know what the officers there find.  Thank you."

"Yes, sir." 

Ron's mind was reeling.  That was possibly the most interesting point of information they'd been given. The other passerby that had reported the crimes had used their cellphones.  Why use a payphone?  Why go out of one's way to use a payphone? The desire not to be traced using their phone?  Did they just not have a phone?  What had caused them to hang up? 

He listened as the officer's shoe covers crinkled as he walked away.  Ron was trying to come up with the right question for Toto.  There had to be something that looking at the scene can tell us about the person that reported the crime. 
 
He was at a loss.  There were too many variables at play for him to make a read of what the situation must have been at the crime scene just prior to the body being reported.  

He got off the floor and back onto the stool he'd been sat on.  The last few bites of the omelet still sat on his plate.  He was no longer hungry, the case had his full focus now.  He listened closely to Toto through the earphones, there wasn't much to hear on his end. A few minutes of quiet, just some faint rustling. Ron brought his plate back up to the kitchenette to wash it.  He was still trying to make sense of the new information they'd been given.

Toto seems to be mulling over something. 

Wait. No. 

Mulling is the wrong word for what I'm hearing.

That rustling's Toto messing with his hair again. 

What's got him bent out of shape? 

"Toto?"

The rustling continued.

The man's in a spiral then.  I should have noticed it sooner. 

"Toto, whatever it is that you're doing to your hair over there cannot possibly be good.  Let it go.  Talk me through the issue." 

The rustling continued for about another minute and then stopped. Toto cleared his throat.

Toto remained quiet otherwise. 

Ron felt disappointed by the silence on the other side of the phone.

Ugh.  Small park.  I keep forgetting.  He can't just go on and tell me what's going on.  If whatever he's done to his hair hasn't called attention to him, the one sided conversation certainly would. 

He went back downstairs. Maybe trying to give his brain a break by working on the color coding would do something to help him draw the needed connections between pieces of information from the crime scene.

Toto's voice came through his earbuds, "On the concrete curb about 1.5 meters from the woman there is a crest marked in white paint.  It appears to have been spraypainted with a stencil, the edges of the image are uneven in some places." 

Sharp eye Toto. 

The uneven edges of the crest were a departure from the last two crime scenes, if Ron remembered the images he'd been sent from the last scenes correctly. 

I wonder what circumstances caused them to wind up like that?  He considered it as he started picking up the first few green items he'd wanted to arrange by color on the shelves he'd cleared the day before. 

He was about to draw up a profile on victim #4/perpetrator #3 that included the information that the person was not very artistic, or perhaps just not detail oriented when a new set of crinkling from shoe covers came through the earbuds. 

"The team that was sent to the payphone turned up several prints, some more recent than others.  We've been running them. All have matches except for one so far.  Would you like to have officers attempt to contact the matches?"  it was the officer that had spoken to Toto just a minute ago. 

All except one with matches...  huh.. and what are the odds that our one non-match is our person of interest? 

There was a pause on the other side of the phone before the shoe covers retreated again. 

Toto's voice was a whisper the next time Ron heard from him, "It almost sounds like our third perpetrator stuck around long enough to report the body.  They may have left prints at the payphone that called in the body." 

"I was thinking the same thing Toto.  It's strange that they'd have stuck around that long.  I get the feeling our unmatched prints will be the ones of the perpetrator, so hopefully they don't burn too much manpower going after the matches they've found." 

Toto was still quiet. 

At this point, Ron was trying to come up with what could be a better system for him tagging along to scenes.  The difficulty he was having getting replies from Toto was driving him insane.   Had the last two been this difficult too??  Had he just been able to ignore it through the haze the tranquilizers left in his mind?  Is Mamiana park just so abnormally small that Toto can't say half the things I'm expecting to hear from him? 

He tried to breathe through the frustration he was feeling, unsure if it needed to be directed at himself or the circumstances that he and Toto had been placed in today.   There wasn't a better solution for him at this point when it came to the crime scene issue. He didn't have any other technology that he could send Toto with and he'd been wary about involving Spitz in the most recent set of cases. The whole situation was dangerous and asking Spitz to handle the amount of information he would need to be handling to help Ron get a better read on Toto at the crime scenes would put a larger target on the man's back.   Involving Spitz more also introduced the risk of information being leaked. As much as he wanted to trust Spitz after how much help he'd been in the past, the fact that Spitz's students got information about Ron and Toto from him and managed to travel across the globe before Spitz got back to him about the information getting out was concerning. 

Toto hadn't spoken to anyone that wasn't a part of the crime crew for some hours.   His spoken observations had ceased after he'd commented on the crest.  Ron had found himself lost in thought, first about his information gathering dilemma, then the issue of whether he was better off with or without his tranquilizers when he was tagging along to crime scenes over the phone.  He'd eventually dropped both issues, he couldn't find clear solutions to either and he decided to just listen to Toto's mic and go back to his color coding, folding and organizing the green clothing, trying to come up with a good way to display it. Through the phone, there'd been more crinkling of shoe covers.  The sharp sound of a clipboard and shuffling of papers, the scratching of a pen as he assumed Toto began taking down written information.  There'd been a long on-and-off conversation between Toto and what he figured was the crime scene photographer, periods of quiet interrupted by the flicker of a camera shutter, the sound of a laptop mouse clicking, occasional comments from Toto or the photographer about angles, lighting, or including certain parts of the crime scene.  There'd been the plasticky sounds of evidence bags, the uncomfortable snapping sound of gloves being donned and removed, he assumed for the purposes of evidence collection.  Various sets of covered shoes moving through the crime scene, as evidenced by the muffled crinkling sounds that had become a near constant background noise.  Finally Toto had called in the medical team to transport the body, the zipper on the body bag, the sound of several pairs of feet walking in unison as the body was moved to be transported. 

The sound of plastic tearing. Toto's footsteps changed from crinkles to soft thumping.  Oh, that had been his shoe covers being torn off. 

The running water noise got louder and then quieter before it faded away entirely.  Ron assumed Toto had left the park. Toto's phone made the clacking sound of a text being written and then the whoosh of it being sent. 

Ron had found himself so occupied with the visual task of color coding over the past few hours that he hadn't really realized that Toto had neglected to send pictures of the crime scene until he heard the man walking away from it.  He'd need them at this point if he was going to have any hope of making sense of the bits of information he'd been fed throughout the morning through Toto's mic.  He'd gotten a few pictures of the last two scenes.  He knew it was dubiously legal, at best, for Toto to send them to him, so he'd left the topic alone for the first few minutes of Toto's walk away from the scene, until he was sure that Toto didn't have any colleagues nearby.  

"Toto-"

Toto's voice interrupted Ron as if he hadn't heard the man at all "Okay Ron, I'm headed into the station now, so I'll catch you when I'm off work.  Let me know if the students notice anything new.  I'm going to see if Amamiya will let us push through those first two victim's forensics now that we have a new development." 

Toto sounded a little drained, as if the lack of solution presented by Ron disappointed him. 

"Good idea about forensics!.  Don't forget to send crime scene photos-" 

The phone call ended. 

Huh. 

I'm going to try not to take that personally. 

He looked at the stack of greenish clothing he'd been trying to arrange in a gradient on one of the shelves.  The mischief he'd been up to all morning had lost its appeal.   Something was off with those last few minutes of the call with Toto. 

Chapter Text

The whole crime scene had felt disjointed.  If the last two scenes really had been as bad as this one had been, Ron no longer felt like Toto's insistence on the students' involvement in the case had been superfluous. Was I just bad at asking questions this time?   Was there really nothing else for Toto to notice?  Why am I unable to pick up on what the important patterns in the evidence are? 

For some reason, Ron still didn't exactly understand what he was supposed to be looking for when it came to the crime scene.   The woman had been poisoned in the middle of the night, most likely via injection into the back of the upper right arm.  She'd collapsed, muscles tensed, and died at the time.  Some hours later her body was reported by an individual who refused to be identified and had opted to call the crime in at a payphone that had been a 5 minute walk away rather than use a cellphone.  Either the work of the most eccentric elderly individual on the planet or the work of someone that was somehow implicated in the crime but felt the need to report it? But what for?  Guilt?  The victims and perpetrators had all been involved with the M family, did they know each other?  Was that where the guilt came from? 

How any of this tied in with the symbol or the chimera clue that had been left at the last crime scene was beyond him.  The method of murder has been poison... Chimeras aren't even known for poisons.  A chimera... a goat, a lion, a snake.  Snakes made poisons.  To Ron's fairly extensive general knowledge, there weren't any goats or lions known for producing poisons... or venoms.  Huh.  Was the series of cases a chimera because of how the identities of victims and perpetrators blended together?  Each person on the chain simultaneously victim and perpetrator much the way that the chimera was simultaneously a goat, lion, and a snake?   Or could a different use of the word chimera be the key that would make the clue make sense in the context of the case?  Chimera like it's used in biology? as a word that means one organism with the blending of two different genetic profiles?  That could explain the identity of the victims as perpetrators in each other's crimes... Still, that's something we haven't confirmed to be true though. 

This is the second victim that we've identified a possible needle mark on... what significance does that have?   Why didn't the second victim have a needle mark?  What put the scratches on the second victim?   Why do any of the victims wind up in the location they are murdered in and what motivates them to be there? 

Ron's nerves were frayed from the nightmare he'd had and from the strange end to the call with Toto.  He'd never really understood how Toto could become overwhelmed at crime scenes and just stand frozen tugging at his hair, but the growing pile of evidence that defied any pattern he tried to put it to was starting to make him feel like Toto had the right idea with the worried hair pulling.

He'd hoped earlier that working on the color coding project would help settle him.  It had done nothing of the sort.  He was still lacking the key piece of information that would make the whole series of cases fall into a clear cut pattern.   He was missing his much needed crime scene photos as well and he had no clue what it was that had been bothering Toto as he'd abruptly ended the call a few minutes ago. 

Something needed to give.  The case wasn't going to get solved without something clicking and at the moment nothing was.  Every minute Ron went without a clue as to what his solution was another minute that Alice could be setting up whatever twisted finale for the case that she had cooked up. 

It would be easier if Toto could come back to the safehouse.  The reaction that he'd have to the mess that Ron had made of the place in his quest to color code would be problematic, but he'd calm down.  Toto always did eventually, no matter what it was that Ron had gotten up to.  It was just easier to think with the man there.  Maybe the blind faith that Toto had in him was what did it?  It didn't really matter what it was about Toto that made it easier for Ron to solve things when he was around.  In fact, Ron didn't particularly want to think to hard about whatever it was,  what was important was that Ron's brain had a boost of at least 20 percent when Toto was there to look dazzled by whatever solution Ron had pulled from the clues laid out in front of them. 

At the moment, the details of the case weren't yielding the information that Ron needed from them.  Toto's observations had thus far passed muster with the Blue students, so it wasn't like he was missing any obvious information that would make the case click together neatly.  Toto had even humored him and laid down next to the victims at every scene except the last one, it wasn't like he was missing out on any of the actions he'd normally do at a crime scene.  The clear departures from his and Toto's typical cases was that they were separated and Ron didn't have the luxury of making appearances at any of the crime scenes. 

What is it that I'm missing? 

His phone ringtone started coming through the buds in his ears.  He didn't particularly want to go all the way upstairs to the phone to see who it was that was calling before he answered. 

I hope it's Toto. 

He hit a button on one of the earbuds to answer. 

"Kamonohashi-san?" It wasn't Toto, it was Hutter. 

Ron tried to stifle the part of his mind that was disappointed by this before he spoke.  "Hello!"

"We're headed to look at the third crime scene at Mamiana park, Isshiki-sensei just sent us the information about it.  Isshiki-sensei said he couldn't be on the call with us because he's back at the station, so we thought we'd go ahead and call you directly."

So that was the text that Toto had sent on his way from the crime scene.  It made sense. 

"Alright!  I'm excited to see what y'all can pick up at the scene.  Did you get a good explanation of what the scene was like?" 

There was a muffled rustle on the phone that Ron soon realized was the sound of it exchanging hands and then Alyssa spoke, "We heard there was another poisoning overnight, this time with no witnesses.   We haven't gotten any photos from the crime scene yet!" 

"I haven't either, otherwise, I'd go ahead and send them to y'all.  Are all four of you there?  Have you gotten to the park yet?"

"Yes, all of us are here" replied Alyssa "and we're just a few minutes away from the park.  This is a surprisingly quiet area!" 

"Oh?" 

"Yeah, the park we looked at yesterday was huge and in a busy area" said Hutter.

"Ours was a little smaller but there was still a good amount of traffic, also some stores and a school,  This one's literally in the middle of a neighborhood." said Alyssa. 

Ron was getting a slightly better picture of what the crime scene had to have looked like with that. 

There's one thing the students are good for that Toto couldn't be, the outsiders that they are, everything they're seeing is new to them.  We won't be missing any important details this time.  Unfortunately those important details are probably going to wind up buried under about a hundred unimportant details. 

Marsh and Knight had been unexpectedly quiet. 

"Hutter, Alyssa, did you really bring along Marsh and Knight or did y'all leave them behind?"  

"I'm here."  that was Knight's voice, he sounded unenthusiastic about the crime scene they were on the way to, "Marsh is here too, he's just banned from talking at the moment." 

HUH?

"Pardon?" 

"He wouldn't stop talking" Knight's voice had somehow become even more sour. 

"Oh my gosh, Kamonohashi-san, he's been talking non-stop about how exciting it is to be in Japan.   It got so bad yesterday that after we checked out the two crime scenes, Knight had to go back to the hotel early because he had a headache from it." explained Alyssa, "I really think he still had jet lag" she added whispering, the amusement in her tone palpable.  

"Yeah, Knight wound up sitting out dinner and this crazy arcade we went to last night.  It's really too bad, Knight, I'm telling you it was amazing.  The place was covered in claw machines, I got this sick keychain.  Kamonohashi-san, Marsh won like 12 stuffed animals.  He kept us there for hours trying to win all the cool ones, we almost had to drag him out of there.  We haven't even figured out how we're going to get them on the plane." 

Alyssa started laughing,  "I think we should split them between all our suitcases and Marsh should let each of us take one of them as a reward for helping him smuggle them back home.  We already had to help him carry them all back to the hotel!" 

Knight groaned. If Ron had to guess, this had to be the third or fourth time the boy had been subjected to this story and subsequent plan to evacuate the stuffed animals this morning. 

Ron had his thumb and forefinger squeezing the bridge of his nose.  He wasn't sure if he needed to laugh or be worried. 

They really shouldn't be running around like this without a chaperone. 

That being said... poor Marsh.  He chuckled. 

"Alright, alright.  I understand that he's been a bit of a nuisance but I can't let you run around unsupervised without knowing that everyone is actually present so I'm going to need y'all to let Marsh speak for a moment.  Marsh, try to keep the awestruck monologuing to a minimum or you're going back on restriction.   Are they keeping you against your will, Marsh?"  He was trying to sound serious but the sentence came out with a laugh.  

"I'm okay Kamonohashi-san!  Alyssa, no one is getting a gift stuffed animal because they help me get them back to England!  I already told you I can fit all of them in my bag." 

"There's one that's the size of your torso Marsh!" Hutter chimed in.

"You just want the hippo! And Alyssa I know you suggested this because you want the Chokocat I won!"

"I literally called dibbs on it before you won it! And its limited edition!" 

"And then you lost and walked away from the machine!"  Marsh complained

"Ugh!" was Alyssa's reply.

There was more overlapping discussion between the three over Marsh's spoils from the arcade.  Apparently everyone else was abysmal at playing claw machines and had been too proud to ask him to win things for them at the time.   Incredible, this was Blue's best and brightest.  Ron, for his part, had missed out on the unserious part of high school and had instead laser focused on perfect grades and becoming a world class detective as quickly as possible, the conversation through the phone was quite novel to him.  The students were being loud and pretty boisterous, Ron was almost worried that an actual fight would break out before he remembered they were all about a year from being adults anyway, they were a little too old for this to be serious. It was really just a way for Alyssa and Hutter to harass Marsh about the stuffed animals they liked.  Knight had been quiet the whole time. 

Finally he cut in.  "Okay!  Okay!  Everyone! New rule, Marsh, you're no longer the only person who's banned from talking.  You're all banned from talking about anything not related to the case until we get through this crime scene." 

"Thank God."  Knight sounded like he'd been saved from the chaos that had plagued him since the trip started.   Ron almost felt bad for him, but then reminded himself that this was all (most likely) Knight's fault anyway, without him and his Alliance involvement the students could have been nuisances at home in England, not nuisances abroad. 

"We're at the park anyway." said Knight. 

"Oh!  I was wondering why we stopped walking!" exclaimed Marsh. 

Knight gave out a long suffering grumble.  Clearly he's at the end of his rope, I'd never thought he'd be the kind of student to do something so undignified as complain. 

"Alright! Now before we go in, one of you give me a rundown of all the information you know and I'll get you up to speed on what I heard from Toto".  Ron said.  

He was hoping that he sounded more confident than he felt in directing the students. There was a reason he'd put Toto down as the one in charge of teaching the students when they'd gone and visited Blue.  It was one thing to sit and explain an interesting topic, it was another entirely to teach while trying to manage chaos and keep a group on task.  That wasn't a skill Ron had, it certainly was one that Toto had, Ron had done enough mischief at crime scenes for Toto to prove his ability to wrangle chaos while keeping up with an idea a dozen times over. 

Where's Toto when I need him... Ron thought to himself before one of the students interrupted his thoughts. 

"There was a poisoning of an older woman at the park either late yesterday evening or very early this morning.  She was called in at a payphone by an anonymous person who has not been identified yet.  It appears poison was injected in her upper arm.  A crest from Alice Moriarty was found at the scene." recited Alyssa. 

"Alright!  Good!  In addition to that, police have been unable to use her identification information to draw up anything in the computer system and they have found several matches to fingerprints that were found at the payphone."

"At the payphone?!" 

"Yes, at the payphone.  The police have already looked at it and gotten information, I believe Toto asked y'all specifically to go look at it because he wasn't able to take a look at it personally and he didn't want any information to go unreviewed." 

"So they're already running prints from the payphone?" 

"They've run them already and have some matches, but also a set of unidentified prints, they're contacting the persons whose prints they've identified. Of course, we should probably suspect that the unidentified prints belong to our person of interest, meaning the fingerprints are a dead end for us.  I know it probably sounds like a little bit of a waste of our energy to go all the way over just to get a look at a payphone but it could give us some interesting information regardless, so we're going to go ahead and do that after we check out the crime scene here.  We really want you all to go get a look at the payphone to get an idea of what caused the person who called in the body to choose to do so there, so we want details, how easy it was to find, whether there's any surveillance cameras nearby, how visible the location is to nearby dwellings and businesses, and how a person might have traveled away from the payphone once they made the call.  I know it's fairly basic Knight, but it's still an important part of the investigation."

"Right" Knight didn't particularly sound convinced.

"So y'all go ahead and head into the park.  Give me as much description as possible on what you see, it's a fairly small park and that did limit the investigation earlier this morning."

Ron got up and stretched,  he'd been sitting sorting green objects for a little too long, his muscles were starting to complain.  The green section was looking about perfect, objects arranged carefully in a way that caught the eye.  It was whimsical, like one of the I spy books he'd had when he was little, but entirely monochromatic.  He was a little proud of it.  It was a shame he was going to have to take the whole thing apart eventually.  It was time for him to move on to another color, pink this time, and it would be a good activity to do while the students gave him their take on the crime scenes.  The only thing better would be if he could get copies of the crime scene photos from Toto. 

He went upstairs. 

Hutter started giving a play by play of the scene as they went into the park. He described the location of the fountain, the playground area.  The tree cover at the park, which Toto hadn't addressed earlier. Knowing how much of the area was visible to someone outside the park could be useful.  The park was surrounded exclusively by residential blocks, with a single restaurant across the street, the posted hours indicated that the restaurant had been closed the entire window of time that the murder might have been committed.  There were two street side entrances to the park and an exit that went towards an apartment complex.  Ron wasn't getting much information that would tell him who the murderer was, but it was getting easier to recognize a pattern, every crime scene happened somewhere that the culprit could wander off, leaving through an exit different than their entrance, there was an effort on someone's part to pick locations that would make it more difficult to ensure identification of the perpetrator. 

He was back in the loft to get his phone, it lit up as he was reaching for it on the futon.  Toto had sent crime scene pictures.  

Thank goodness.   I almost thought he forgot about me. 

He sent a few thumbs up before he set the phone down.  I'll review them in a moment,  I want to know what the students notice first. 

He started folding the futon and his blankets back up to store them.  It felt a little pointless, he had plenty of space and he was going to be unfolding it again to go to sleep tonight, but it made him feel organized and in control of what was going on in his little corner of the world, at the moment that seemed to be more important to him than usual. 

What was going on in those last few minutes with Toto this morning?

He wouldn't have had me on speaker phone.  So even if he was with a colleague, they shouldn't have heard anything incriminating...

Was he being followed again?  Well... maybe the better way to put it is...  was his tracker being more aggressive than ususal?  There's no way they've stopped following him...  What was bugging him? 

"I think we found where the body was!"  Alyssa's voice came through the phone. 

"Oh?"

"Yeah there's no police tape at the scene so we're trying to go off what we heard from Isshiki-sensei as well as what the most likely spots would be and there's this area on the right side of the fountain that has really good cover from the trees and the plants are all pressed down in it" said Hutter. 

"Any sign of the crest?" 

"None yet!  Do you know what it was made of this time Kamonohashi-san?" said Alyssa. 

"I believe it was painted.  Knight how are you feeling about our suspected location of the body?" said Ron.  There's got to be something he's heard from the alliance about this murder, as quickly as he was able to access information about the last two.   The trick is just to find out what it is that the Alliance has told him. 

"Oh, Knight's not here Kamonohashi-san." said Marsh. 

"What?!" 

"Okay no, Marsh said that badly, he's on the other side of the courtyard right now looking at something." said Alyssa. 

"Hey Knight, get over here!  We think we know where the body was!" called Hutter. 

"I found the crest!" Knight called back. 

There were a few noises of excitement between the students and then they were on the move. 

I think the crest is supposed to be right next to where the body was if I remember correctly.

Ron opened the photos that Toto had sent.  Yep.  There was the crest, just visible in the background of one of the closer up pictures of the body.  

"Oh wow!  The crest is really messy this time." said Marsh. 

"It definitely was spray painted." said Alyssa

"Yeah, by someone who didn't know how to use spray paint." Said Hutter. 

There were a few chuckles between Marsh and Alyssa at that. 

"Or maybe they painted it with their eyes shut." said Alyssa. 

"Oh! They probably spray painted it at the same time as the murder" said Marsh. 

"What makes you say that Marsh?" said Ron. 

"Well it looks awful.  The other two crime scenes had crests that were much less messy, even the one that had been painted on wet grass looked better than this.   We know that the murder happened last night and the other two murders happened in the middle of the day.  I think someone spray painted this in the dark." 

"Are there no lights at the park?" asked Ron. 

"There's one lamp post and then the lights from the street, but the lights from the street would be blocked out by the restroom building for this area and the lamp post is all the way over in the play area, so this is almost the furthest point away from the light." 

"It looks like it would have been really dark.  They could probably barely see to paint the crest" said Knight.

"And wouldn't you know it by looking at it." chuckled Hutter.

Ron wanted to start laughing.  This was a murder investigation but you wouldn't know it from how the students were talking.  They are having way too much fun with this... except Knight. 

"I wonder why the crest is so far from where the body was." said Hutter. 

"I don't think it is." stated Knight. 

Alarm bells went off in Ron's head. 

He's been in touch with the Alliance about the crime scene then.  There's a reason he knew where to find that crest. 

"It's literally across the courtyard." said Alyssa. 

"That's not the only area with flattened plants.  There's one here too." said Knight. 

"Actually, he's right, the photos I just got from Toto show it being just about a meter from the crest." 

"That makes like no sense!  This area is so much more exposed than the other one!  Someone could have seen the murder happen!" argued Hutter. 

"It would have been dark at the time and this is the darkest part of the park, it couldn't have been in a less visible area." said Knight.

"I guess that makes sense" said Alyssa. 

Knight's really stuck fighting for his life when it comes to discretely getting in the alliance information he's been given, these other three really aren't interested in hearing it, Ron thought with amusement. 

"Okay, now that we've established the body's location I want y'all to get a look around where it was, the photos I have make it look like there's dirt under the victim's nails.   Are we seeing any areas around where it looks like she could have been digging?" 

There was quiet through the phone for a few minutes while the students looked.  Eventually it was Alyssa who answered, "There's some areas where the dirt and mulch around the plants near the crest is disturbed, but there's no deep holes in the ground and we're not noticing anything in the dirt that she might have been looking for."

Hutter and Marsh's voices were a little more distant when they replied in the negative.   The students must have spread out. 

"Anything else of note before I set you all loose to search for anything that catches your eyes?" 

"Not only does the park have just one lamp post in it, but there's no surveillance cameras, not even looking out from the entrances to the restrooms." it was Knight, speaking at what was probably a fairly high volume from some distance away. 

"Good eye!  Okay everyone, go ahead and spread out a little more and search for anything the crime scene crew might have missed.  After you're done I'll send over the photos Toto sent to me and we'll go over those." 

The students replied in the affirmative. 

Ron was getting concerned. The more the students looked at the scene and fed him details, the more convinced he was that they would be unable to find the perpetrator.   That was, of course, problematic in the grand scheme of stopping Alice's string of murders because Ron was almost (not entirely) certain that their perpetrator of this crime scene would become victim number 4.  It would be significantly harder to get ahead of the curve without knowing the individual's identity or at least some demographic information about them. 

The murderer had the benefit of something between 4 and 8 hours of time unaccounted for to clean up any evidence left behind, distance themselves, and move on (potentially to the site of their eventual murder).  There was a quickly growing body of evidence suggesting that it would be impossible to track down the individual by any conventional method, no surveillance footage, no witnesses or potential witnesses due to the darkness and time of day, lack of traffic in the area, and the multiple entrances and exits from the park.   The only lead was the payphone caller (which in and of itself suggested the possibility that the perpetrator themselves called in the murder and chose to do so in the least traceable way possible). 

The whole thing was methodical, and more cleanly executed than the first and second murders in several ways, the payphone call being the singular wrench in the cleanly turning gears of the crime. 

Ron wanted to make some assumptions about the individuals that had done each of the three murders.  Murderer number 1 was victim number 2, the man had seemed nervous in the crime scene images that he'd reviewed.   They had gotten confirmation that the man was not actually on staff at the Metropolitan Police department, he'd just managed to infiltrate the crime scene very effectively and then had dropped off the map until his body was discovered at the second crime scene.   The profile of the second perpetrator was still very much a mystery, while it was possible that victim number 3 had been the perpetrator of the second murder, it wasn't confirmed in any way and there was no significant evidence to suggest something to that effect without relying on the pattern set by the prior murder.  There was the whole issue of how exactly the second victim had been killed.  That kind of information would most likely yield more information about who the second perpetrator had been.  Without knowing the exact method used to kill at the second crime scene, it was near impossible to set the timeline that the second perpetrator had followed.   The third perpetrator interested Ron.  The choice of time and place of the murder was exceptionally well picked, guaranteeing almost no possible witnesses.   There'd been a possible needle prick to the back of the victims arm, there was almost no way to put an injection there with a remote device, so it was almost certain that the third perpetrator had been present at the time of the murder (something that could not be guaranteed for victims 1 or 2).  It was more than likely that the crest had been spray painted at night, not necessarily at the exact time of the murder (as Marsh had suggested) but given the bad shape that the crest had been in, low visibility very likely had been an issue.   Either that or the person that set the crime scene up prior to the victim's arrival had been exceptionally sloppy.   If the third perpetrator had needed to be present at the time of the murder, then they had very likely made some kind of contact with the victim before killing them, even if just for a few minutes prior to administering the poison.   An older woman would be cautious at night, especially while alone, and wouldn't be willing to let a stranger approach her without raising a fuss, it further cemented Ron's suspicion that the victims and perpetrators not only were former M family members, but had known each other in some way. 

The third crime scene still stood out from the first and second for the lack of witnesses.  Perpetrators 1 and 2 would have needed to operate under very tight constraints to organize the deaths without attracting attention or being noticed by the victims.  Having the third murder occur at night in a low traffic area had definitely given the third perpetrator much more leeway in terms of timing. It was interesting, but Ron didn't know what to make of it exactly.  It almost seemed like Alice might find the third perpetrator somewhat less expendable than the first two, given the choice to provide them with a crime scene that provided that much more anonymity.   That wouldn't make sense though if the goal was to dispose of the four former M family members.   The idea was interesting, but wasn't yielding much in the way of useful information, he decided to bring the topic up with Toto later. 

He wondered about the victims.  The first had been blind, led to the location of their murder by the audio from their phone, presumably with the intention of picking up or dropping off an object.   The second had spoken before their death, the word chimera, and reportedly had died holding an image of a chimera.  The image was long gone, but the detail left Ron wondering if the victim had come to the crime scene with the picture guiding them as some kind of clue or if they had found it at the scene just prior to their death.  Beyond the unusual method of poisoning that seemed to be suggested by the state of the second victim, there was still the question of how the second victim had disposed of the murder weapon and the possible mystery object from the first crime scene.  Was it possible that the image of the chimera had been what was left by the first victim?   It certainly would have been small enough to fit discretely in the slats of the bench.   If that was the case, was each crime scene tied to a different mythical creature?  Was that the game Alice was playing?  There hadn't been any noted suggestion of a  type of mythical creature at the first crime scene, but that just left the possibility that they'd missed the clue, or that the second victim had picked up the clue before police officers could collect it.  If that was the case, could there be a similar image to find somewhere at this crime scene?  Or was part of the killers' assignment to pick up the clue before it could be found by police?   Was that the connection?  Was this the method by which Alice was communicating her plans to the perpetrators/victims?

There just weren't enough data points from the crime scenes to help him decide if he was just spitballing anything that came to mind regarding the crime scenes or if he was actually managing to pick up on subtle patterns.  He was fairly certain that even Marsh, with his talent for recognizing patterns, was lacking enough information to draw any plausible solutions. 

"Kamonohashi-san?  Are you still there?" Marsh's voice came through the phone. 

"Still here" Ron replied.

"Sorry, it's just been like 40 minutes, we weren't sure if you were there." said Marsh. 

"We've done a really thorough sweep of the park and there's not really anything that we're recognizing as relevant to the case." said Alyssa. 

"If it weren't for the crest and the indent in the plants near it, it'd be impossible to tell that there was anything strange that happened here." added Hutter. 

"Do you think it might be time for us to go ahead to check out the payphone?" asked Knight. 

"Wait!  I wanted you all to get a thorough look at the park before I gave you additional information about the crime scene.  I'm going to send over the pictures from the crime scene this morning and I want you all to reevaluate the park with the new information and see if that changes any of your conclusions." 

He sent the images over. 

"Oh my gosh!  No one said it was someone's grandma that died!" exclaimed Alyssa.

"I thought the victims were supposed to the hardened criminals from the M family." said Marsh. 

"The intelligence I saw said that they were members of the M family" argued back Knight.

"This really does just look like a sweet little old lady." said Hutter. 

"Okay, Okay everyone.  She's not all that old.  Also don't be so quick to judge by appearances.  Part of what makes organized crime effective at dodging the law is that there are people involved that you wouldn't immediately suspect.   Just because she's an older woman doesn't mean she couldn't be a former M family member." said Ron. 

There were a few more quiet exclamations of surprise before the students settled down. 

A few minutes went by before Ron prompted the students again. "Are you all ready to take another look at the crime scene?"

"We are!" replied Alyssa.

There was the sound of the students scattering again. 

Ron collected the dirty clothing from around the loft.  

I really need to get laundry done today.   It's lucky Toto's uncle runs a second-hand store and not a regular clothing store.  He thought about the washer and dryer downstairs in the stock room.  I'd really be in a situation if I had to clean all of this by hand. 

The students were still quiet, doing their second investigation of the scene. Ron hauled his clothing downstairs and dumped it into the washer before adding soap and starting it.

He started back at his color organizing of the downstairs and was in the process of trying to balance several sneakers in varying sizes and shades of pinkish red into a pyramid when the students started speaking again. 

"We're still failing to come up with anything new Kamonohashi-san." said Hutter.

"That's alright.  That just means we've exhausted all the information we're going to be able to get out of the park.  Time to head over to the payphone!"

The students responded in the affirmative.  The running water noise from the fountain faded from the background as the students left the park.  It was quiet where the students were out on the street.  Ron hadn't heard a single car go by.   This really is a low traffic area then.   The students seemed to be managing themselves fine without directions from Ron.  He went back to his stacking. 

It had been about 15 minutes before Ron got concerned. 

"Are you having trouble finding the payphone?  Did Toto send y'all directions?" Ron asked. 

"Knight you have directions right?" asked Hutter. 

"No?" replied Knight. 

"So we've just been walking?" asked Alyssa,  "Why'd you take the lead if you didn't have directions?" 

"Wait is that it right there?" asked Marsh. 

Ron was appalled.  Perhaps he needed to have Spitz set up some kind of surveillance on one of the student's phones.  Have they really just been wandering around aimlessly in a country they knew near nothing about on their own?  At this point I'm thinking I never should have suggested the four of them go anywhere without Toto.   And to think they were out till late last night and the whole time Toto was under the impression they'd gone back to the hotel. 

I'll be having a conversation with Spitz about this later for sure.  and Toto. 

"Okay. Okay wait.  Everyone stop." Ron said, "Figure out where you are before you guys keep walking." 

"Kamonohashi-san, we know where we are!  That's literally the payphone right there." said Marsh. 

"Oh my gosh, he's right.  It's so plain looking I almost didn't notice it." said Alyssa.

"Wow Knight, it's like you have a GPS in your head and you don't even know it!."  said Hutter

Ron was punching down the feeling that the whole situation was spinning out of control.  Unfortunately, he needed to have faith in the students' ability to keep themselves from getting lost.  The current situation was inspiring a large amount of anxiety. 

"You're sure that what y'all are looking at is the payphone?" said Ron. 

"Give me a second." Said Knight, there was a pause, "The translation app on my phone is telling me that it's a payphone, also it looks like a payphone except like the most boring version of one possible." 

"Okay. Good." Ron took a deep breath.  Crisis averted.

"What can y'all tell me about the area?"

"Not a lot of traffic."  "It's next to an apartment complex"  "The other side of the road is just a subway bridge"  "It's pretty hard to find" "I don't see any cameras"   "There's an alleyway right along one side of the building it's next to."  The students called out various observations of the area.   It led directly to the conclusion Ron was afraid he'd draw.  They were going to come up empty handed if they went looking for person's that might have witnessed a call being made at roughly 5:30 am and there were enough ways for a person to approach and leave the payphone that there'd be no way to nail down whether or not a passerby seen by someone on the nearby streets could be definitively identified as the person that made the call. 

Ron had the sneaking suspicion that Alice's game this time was to starve him of information and distract him as much as possible from whatever it was that had actually gone on at the crime scenes.   He almost missed the predicable nature of the serial crimes that the other two Moriarty siblings had set up. 

"Okay, good job everyone.  I think that's the best we're going to get in terms of information from the crime scene on our own.   As I'm sure you all know, the police force is running information from the scene and forensics, so we'll talk later to go over that when it's available.  I'd recommend you all head back to your hotel or at least the general vicinity of the hotel until then."

"Do you think it'd be okay for us to wander around the neighborhood just a little more?  What if there's more clues we're missing?"  it was Alyssa asking. 

Ron was understanding acutely why Toto had said 'Good grief' so emphatically yesterday evening upon learning that he would be responsible for wrangling the students during their time in Japan.  He was exhausted.  Teenagers were extremely draining to be responsible for, and these ones were generally responsible, well behaved teenagers.  Ron didn't want to imagine how much worse it would have been trying to keep track of the students if they'd been half as troublesome as he was when he was younger.  He vowed to bring his mother an enormous bunch of flowers the next time he visited her.

"Right,  Okay you guys can wander the neighborhood, but I want hourly updates until you head back to the hotel.   No one goes anywhere alone and no one does anything that would make Toto freak out.   Are we clear?" 

"Understood" came the chorus of voices. 

"We'll keep you updated Kamonohashi-san!" said Hutter. 

The phone hung up. 

Toto is absolutely going to lose his mind when I tell him what those three got up to last night instead of going back to the hotel. 

Ron set down the pink objects he'd been trying to sort, buried his face in his hands. 

The chaotic nature of the past two hour's phone call had given him a headache and absolutely drained him. 

He considered going back upstairs to unfold the futon to take a nap.  

That sounds like a lot of work. 

He decided he could handle settling for taking a nap on the couch.  

He got back upstairs and sent a short text to Spitz before getting some needed shut eye. 

'Go ahead and ping the students' phone locations occasionally.  They're being mischievous.'

'Have been since I found out they were there' was the reply.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Knight was having what could best be described as an absolutely no good, completely bad day. 

He wasn't feeling very much at all like he understood criminals any more than when this venture had started out.  He was, however, feeling significantly more anxious and sleep deprived.  

The entire morning had been a bust.  Truly. He'd spent the entire day toeing the line between uncannily good investigative luck and incriminating himself.  Having to skip dinner and the fun activities that everyone else had done yesterday hadn't been such a great loss.  The other students were friendly, but they were also really good at getting on his nerves.   If only he'd actually been able to take that down time to rest like he'd told everyone rather than discretely sneaking out of the hotel and traveling through the city with only the brick burner phone that Alice had given him as a guide.  He'd wanted to take his smart phone to help him translate but Alice had forbidden it and he wasn't much for pissing her off, she seemed to have no qualms about killing indiscriminately.  The murder hadn't gone nearly as smooth as he'd hoped it would.  He'd panicked, gotten cold feet, and then nearly failed to inject the old woman while her back was turned from him.   It was a wonder that he'd been able to sneak up on her at all. When she'd entered the park late last night she'd looked at him like he was some kind of delinquent.  The whole evening leading up to the murder had been so high adrenaline that he'd barely considered the fact that he was killing someone.  The idea had been very abstract until the woman had started groaning and grabbing at her throat before collapsing.  That really had been when things started going wrong. He panicked and was suddenly disgusted by the body in front of him, he'd had to make a run for the restroom to vomit.   Then he'd spent the better part of two hours in the restroom pacing, trying to figure out if there was going to be enough DNA evidence in the restroom to convict him for the murder.  He'd cleaned the place up as best he could with what was there without leaving a trace.  He'd come out of the restroom almost fully convinced that there'd be a full crew of EMTs and police officers on the scene, but the park had been just as quiet as when he'd gone in to the restroom.  Just the sound of a few cicadas somewhere in the trees, the water in the fountain, and quiet music and very very faint conversation that must have been coming from one of the many blocks of apartments around the park.   The woman laid where he'd left her to die.   It was hard to see as dark out as it was, the moon obscured by clouds and the nearest street light almost on the complete opposite side of the park.  Visibility had been so bad that he'd been stuck digging through the bag slung under her arm for almost 5 minutes before he found the half drawing of Nue he was expected by Alice to find and dispose of.   He'd had to touch a corpse to get the stupid piece of paper.  The very idea made him feel like he was going to be sick all over again.   He'd finally pulled out the spray paint and stencil and done his best attempt to make the mark before he wandered out of the park with the evidence. 

He'd been confused about how he felt about the whole situation, so he'd wandered for a long time, at least an hour, hoodie pulled up to cover his blond hair on the off chance that someone would look out of their windows and notice a teenager wandering the area.   Eventually he'd found himself far enough away that he thought it was safe to drop the used syringe, spray paint, and torn up stencil into a trashcan near one of the many residences.   Hands clean of damning evidence he'd wandered more, feeling a little less panicked.  That's when he'd come across the payphone.  At the time he'd thought it was further from the park.   He'd been wandering so long, for all he knew he could have been kilometers away.  It had still been a little while before dawn, the morning still decidedly cool, quiet, and devoid of any other people.   He didn't really know what possessed him to make the call at the payphone, but he had and then immediately thought about the fact that Alice would find out about it and would certainly make this a problem for him.  He'd gotten scared suddenly and hung it up.  Tried to wipe down the earpiece with his sweater sleeves and then taken a turn down a narrow alley before deciding he needed to find his way back to the hotel, where he should have been for the past 6 or 7 hours, before one of his classmates woke up and knocked on his door. 

When he'd gotten back, the sun was taking its first peek over the horizon.  He'd laid down, exhausted and gotten almost an hour and a half of sleep before Marsh, annoying annoying Marsh, had started knocking trying to get him to come to breakfast and hear about the time that everyone else had had at the arcade and at dinner the night before. 

By the time they were called to the familiar crime scene, Knight was already extremely, extremely over the entire trip.  Hutter, Marsh, and even Alyssa (of all people) had been excited and bright eyed that morning despite their late night.  Knight needed at least 8 more hours of sleep before he'd have any kind of enthusiasm for the novelty of being in a new place.  It wasn't like there was actually a case for him to be excited over, he was the culprit, so that eliminated the only real reason that he would have been willing to push through his exhaustion.  He'd dragged through the crime scene, spending the majority of the time having his work from the night before being criticized mercilessly by his classmates.  Maybe if they had to spray paint a symbol in the dark while panicking, they'd be a little more understanding of why it came out looking that way.  Of course, it wasn't like he could defend himself.  So he'd had to stand there and just listen. 

Then he'd been so distracted, tired, and frustrated, that instead of pretending that he had no clue where the payphone was, he'd walked his classmates and Ron Kamonohashi (by proxy) down the exact route he'd taken to the payphone early that morning.  He still didn't understand how that hadn't resulted in some aggressive questioning from all parties present.  He didn't particularly want to think about it at the moment. 

Knight was currently hiding from his three classmates. 

Perhaps hiding was the wrong word for it.

He'd excused himself from the group about 7 minutes ago now, with the excuse that he needed to find something caffeinated to drink before he collapsed while they continued to wander the neighborhood in search of clues.   He'd been standing in front of a vending machine for the past 5 minutes, pretending to try and select a drink, zoning out.  This was his only break from them.  He'd never regretted his choices so much as he did at the moment.   He could have just come to Japan alone, tried to avoid being noticed while he did Alice's bidding rather making a distracting spectacle by bringing along his classmates.  But he'd been cocky and now he was paying for it.   He hoped that he had at least 5 more minutes to just stare mindlessly ahead before one of them came looking for him.   If one of them did show up, he was just going to pretend that he didn't understand how to make the vending machine work. 

He'd heard them talking a minute ago, around the corner.  It was quiet now.  He wondered blankly if they'd decided to keep walking without him. 

I hope so.

Unlikely though. 

They're probably just looking at their phones. 

He eyed the cans of coffee and soda on display in front of him.   Mind emptied of thoughts, zoned out once again.

A large hand wrapped around his upper arm and he snapped abruptly back to the present. 

He looked over at the owner of the hand.

It was a man, one that looked tall and strong enough that Knight was not going to entertain the idea of trying to run.  The man spoke, "Knight Bran Jr.. I'm going to need you to come with me.  And hand me your phone." 

Knight's heart stopped.

He pulled his smart phone out of his pocket and dropped it in the man's hand.  

Chapter Text

Toto spent the day at his desk.  Head down as if he were taking a nap through his lunch break. Residual shame/embarrassment/confusion about what exactly Spitz may or may not have overheard through his bugged phone and his own inability to think with his head screwed on straight when it came to Ron was crowding out any and all thoughts about the case.  He wanted to take a walk or maybe cram his headphones in his ears and blast Nyo-Nyon's most recent album loud enough that he got a headache and any thoughts he had at all would be drowned out.  Unfortunately Toto was a professional and he was at work so neither of the above were options.  So he pretended to take a nap until it was socially unacceptable to do so. 

One pm rolled around and the last stragglers were returning to their cubicles from the lunch break.   The more dedicated staff had already put away the remains of their packed lunches and had been working for some time.   Toto had to sit back up and start pretending to do something productive, no more time for moping. 

His in-basket was still depressingly empty. 

It had to be some kind of sick punishment from the universe. 

Or had Amamiya figured out that he actually enjoyed keeping busy?  Was this her new way of entertaining herself? 

He banished the thought.  He had enough to feel vaguely miserable about. 

He needed something to do. 

He was going to make himself sick with anxiety if he sat with nothing to occupy himself with for very much longer.  The current case was a bad train of thought to jump to. He was hopelessly confused at the moment and was waiting for Ron to give him some much needed pointers. 

No new cases.  No work on the current case.  No trying to keep Ron from showing up and doing something stupid and rash at the precinct. 

What can I do?  There's nothing left to do!

Wait.  A thought settled like a stone in Toto's stomach. 

There was one constant source of dread in Toto's life that he'd, for the longest time, been entirely too busy to address.   Normally when he was working there was way too much to do, but today he had no excuses.

It felt crazy to him that the problem had started so long ago.  He could remember the day it happened.  

He'd been handed a new case, a vandalism of a cargo vehicle belonging to a convenience store.   It was exciting.  He'd thought of it as his first real case at the time.  Toto was nothing but thorough when it came to doing the necessary research for his cases. He'd made a point to get some reading materials from both cold open cases and closed case files.  He'd pulled about a dozen from the records department, cases concerning the area that the truck had been vandalized in, ones that contained similar types of vandalism, any case in the past decade that had involved the business location that the truck belonged to.  All in all, it had been at least 200 pages of reading, stacked neatly in creamy manilla folders on his desk. That number made it sound daunting, but Toto had been enthusiastic about it.  He was ready to take on cases that would make him a good detective and he was willing to put in the background work to make sure he could rise to the occasion.  He'd gone to get a big mug of coffee to drink while he read. On the way to the breakroom Toto dropped his mug on the tile floor. At the time, he'd been grateful it hadn't shattered. He'd picked it up, relieved, and gone ahead and filled it up.  Back at his desk, the mug wound up on top of the pile of manilla folders, then Toto went into his desk drawer looking for his packed lunch which wasn't there. With dismay he realized that he'd left it on the countertop in the kitchen at his apartment. Kiku-san had been passing by Toto's desk at the time he'd made a noise of disappointment and had invited him to come with him to get lunch.  Toto had agreed and they'd left, the steaming mug of coffee still sat on top of the stack of manilla folders on Toto's desk. 

Somehow the entire series of events had been choreographed in such a way that they created maximum damage. 

Toto hadn't realized it until he returned from lunch, Kiku-san following behind him. 

He'd taken pause at the sight of the empty mug upon returning to his desk.  It had certainly been full when he left. 
 There was what appeared to be a dried droplet of coffee on the surface of the top manilla folder along one side of the mug, otherwise no sign of the mug's worth of coffee he'd poured.  Then Toto had picked up the mug and set it to the side on the desk. 

The sight that had greeted him was unpleasant to say the least. 

The previously covered area of the folder was saturated, the puddle the perfect shape of the circular bottom of the mug. In horror, he'd opened the folder, each page in it was ruined. The coffee had leaked, the perfect circle that had adorned the outside of the folder gradually spread into an irregular coffee stain that had traveled page to page.  The ink on the pages wasn't completely unreadable, but it couldn't go back into records once Toto was done with it.  The coffee had kept leaking down, down, down the stack, through almost half of the case files he'd pulled.  

Kiku-san stood beside his desk, examining the bottom of the mug as he held it over his head. 'It's got a crack in it on the bottom here.  Did you drop it?'

Toto hadn't been able to respond verbally.   He'd been absolutely sick with stress about what he'd accidentally done to the case files. 

Then Kiku-san had taken a look down at the ruined case files and continued speaking without Toto's answer. 'I'm afraid you'll need to rewrite those by hand and send them in to be filed.  Those are in no state to go back into records.  Don't let Amamiya-senpai see.'

Then he'd patted Toto on the shoulder as if he hadn't just damned the man to at least 10 hours of paperwork and wandered back to his desk calmly. 
A few minutes later, Toto had weakly sat down. The offending coffee mug sat almost smugly on the corner of the desk that Kiku-san had left it on.  His hands were shaking as he'd picked up the folders of ruined paperwork and dropped them into the largest empty drawer at his desk. 

He had intended to knock out the paperwork that night, but without even picking it up he'd managed to work nearly into the AM hours before being shooed out of the station to go home.  Every day that first week, the papers were something he'd plan to pick up 'tomorrow'.  Eventually he'd found bits and pieces of time to get them done spread out over the course of almost two months.  By the time he finally cleared the last of the first case files out, the vandalism case had become a distant memory and new files had found their way into the drawer as a result of Toto's clumsiness. Drink related mistakes happened often enough that the drawer at his desk was never truly empty.   Thankfully, Toto's cases had been low stakes enough that the case files he pulled were almost never needed by other officers at the station, so he'd never been put in a situation where someone else was missing a file they needed because it was awaiting being rewritten at Toto's desk.   Things had changed when he'd started working with Ron.  He no longer had nothing to do but work and the man monopolized a fair amount of his time both in and out of work.  Overall it was a good thing.  However the growing pile of coffee and tea stained files that needed rewriting had eventually grown to such a size that they'd become a source of constant anxiety for him. 

Since starting with Ron, Toto had never actually managed to sit down and attempt to put a dent into the stack of cases he needed to copy over onto clean paper.

Until today. 

Toto opened the drawer without the intention of dropping a file into it and forgetting about it for the first time in a very long time. 

He pulled the top file out, opened it up, reviewed it, and pulled the necessary blank forms to copy onto. 

He started copying it over.

It was about to be a long afternoon. 

Ron had a problem.  It came in the form of the three neon signs that had been scattered around the second hand store.  One of them was multicolor, which introduced problems to his color coding in and of itself.  He hadn't considered that there was a green and blue sign when he'd made his new layout for the lower level of the store, so the green and blue sections were opposite of each other.   That simply wouldn't do, so he had to move one of them and the green one was already finished so it was the blue that he'd need to move.   He'd disassembled the pink section, including the tower of sneakers he'd painstakingly made and moved the blue into its place before moving the pink section to a new location.   The move took a couple hours that were punctuated by check-in texts from the students.   It wasn't too much work, but Ron was a little disappointed.  He'd put the green section at the front of the store so that all the plants in it get sunlight from the big front windows.  He'd wanted pink next to it because of the enormous chunk of rose quartz that would wind up in the section, it would have caught the light from the window beautifully.  He'd finally been able to hang the multicolored sign between the green and blue sections, then realized that there wasn't any good place to plug it in. That had sent him on a search for a power strip or at least an extension cord.    Eventually he'd found one, gotten the sign hung up and lit, it looked very nice above the blue and green sections. 

He was in the middle of sorting through accessories in the large table case when his phone started ringing, he picked up. 

"Ron!" Toto sounded excited on the other side of the phone.

Ron's heart picked up a little.

"Toto?"

"We have forensics from the first two victims!  I just left the lab." 

"The lab?  They had you come in?" 

"There were some really interesting findings on the second's body, they had me come in person to avoid confusion about what it was that they were seeing" 

The second victim.  The one with the mystery source of poison and the scratches on the neck that weren't made by his fingernails. 

Ron was starting to feel twitchy. 

The opportunity to go see the bodies at the forensics lab.

He wanted to see what they had shown Toto. 

Ron had been standing over the open table case of accessories, but started pacing, the excitement was getting to him.  Toto had information, Ron could find answers now.

He tried to take a deep breath and hold it, but quickly gave up on the idea of calming down and the breath slammed out of his lungs in a tirade. "It was that strange?!  Toto,  What did they find?  Is the lab still open?  I want to go-." 

"Ron." Toto's voice was stern as he interrupted Ron.  

Ron stopped, he'd been so excited at the prospect of some new information about the bodies that he'd forgotten where he was and why.  There would be no going to the forensic science lab for him. 

Stupid Detective's Alliance. 

He heaved a sigh before he corrected himself. 

"I want pictures of them.  Did you take any?"

"Of course Ron" Toto answered, his voice was warm, like he was trying to soothe the crashing wave of disappointment that had hit Ron a moment before. 

Ron's mood swung quickly from dejected to frustrated.  He wanted out.  He wanted to go to the lab. Badly.  There were two bodies there with information that could solve this case for him if he could just go.  He felt guilty about how bad he wanted to be outside of the building he'd spent the last 5 days in.  There was no denying that it was comfortable enough, interesting enough to keep him. Toto had done wonderfully finding this for Ron. He couldn't think of a more Ron-approved safe house than the one he was in.  But he wanted out.  Now.  

Ron was back to pacing, but the pacing wasn't really cutting it for the nervous energy that propelled him.  He was too distracted by what he wanted to do to realize that he'd dropped entirely out of the conversation.  

Toto's voice sounded uncertain as he spoke, "Ron?"

"Yes? Sorry." 

"You're fine Ron.  I know this is hard." 

Ron felt more guilty.  His feet were still refusing to stop moving.  It was dawning on him that he wasn't going to be able to sit out a dose of tranquilizers the way he'd been able to this morning. He moved towards the staircase. 

"It's just for this case." continued Toto, "We'll be back to normal before you know it." 

He was up the stairs, picking up the box of syringes and vials and moving it to the coffee table. 

"Right." he replied to Toto. 

There was a curl of nervousness that twinged in Ron's stomach as he set the box down and the vials in the box clinked together quietly.  

Something went wrong with the last dose.  I need to be more careful this time. 

"I can send over the pictures I got from the forensics lab now and let you take a look at them before I explain what they told me or I can explain and send them over at the same time." offered Toto. 

Smart.  If I can look at them first without knowing, I'll be able to make deductions without clouding them with anything forensics has assumed.   Good move Toto. 

"Send over the pictures first, Toto." 

He set the phone, on speaker, down on the coffee table next to the box, unwrapped the paper and plastic on one of the syringes, swiped the top of the vial with an alcohol pad before he drew up a half dose.  Switched out the needle for a fresh one. Used another alcohol pad to wipe down his upper arm.  Pointed the needle towards the ceiling as he pushed all the air out of the syringe, a tiny droplet of the tranquilizer balanced neatly at the tip of the needle. 

His stomach roiled at the idea of having to do this just to keep from going to the forensics lab.  

This is dumb.   This is actually a dumb idea.  I could wind up sleeping until tomorrow if somehow this one goes as badly as the last did. 

Ron swallowed, his throat made a clicking noise.

The part of his brain that was chanting out- out- out- out with increasing intensity was going to win out if he didn't do it.

Toto's voice came through the phone, "Okay Ron, I think I've sent over everything that I have from the lab, it should come through any moment now."  

Toto's going to be mad at me again. 

Toto's going to be hurt if I wind up getting caught by the alliance because I left the safehouse.

That was the statement the sealed Ron's fate. 

It's less this time.  I'll be okay. 

Ron's phone buzzed, a series of texts from Toto.   The pictures from the forensics lab. 

He left the phone on the table. 

He braced himself for the pain this time before he pushed the needle into his arm.  A cut-off croak still made it's way out of his mouth before he snapped it shut.  The tranquilizer burned going into his arm as he depressed the plunger on the syringe.  

"That was you taking a tranquilizer, wasn't it Ron?" Toto's voice sounded unsettlingly neutral.  It was a little like the one he used to speak to suspects before a crime had been solved by Ron.  Guarded, careful, as if he was trying to keep Ron from bolting.

Dammit. I should have stuffed something in my mouth.  He heard it.

"It was." Ron hated the answer he was giving, but he hated the idea of lying to Toto again even more.   In the grand scheme of things, a lie would do nothing to help him anyway, he had maybe 40 seconds before he started losing track of himself and at that point there wouldn't be a doubt in Toto's mind about what it was that Ron had just done.

"Two doses in a day isn't good Ron." Toto said, voice weary as he said it. 

"This is my first one." Ron countered. The precious little time he had before reality started melting and fading around the edges was ticking away.  He leaned forward clumsily and scooped the needle cap of the table with the tip and slid it back into place.   He tossed the needle toward the far side of the coffee table.  It, thankfully, stopped rolling before it dropped over the edge.  His hands felt like they were crammed into a pair of thick wool gloves as he fumbled to pick up his phone and open the photos that Toto had sent. 

"If this one's the first then what happened this morning?" it was Toto's indignant doesn't-know-he's-airing-grievances voice through the phone. 

Ron's head was starting to spin, he was off balance. The way he felt about even needing the tranquilizers and the empty feeling he got listening to Toto's frustration was too much combined with the chemicals making their way through his system. 

I should ignore it.

Toto's wrong about there being a morning dose of tranquilizers. He's upset.  He doesn't know that I'm hearing him. 

I should ignore it. 

He's just talking to himself.  I can wait until he comes up with whatever response he's intending to give me about this morning. 

I don't want to ignore it. 

Dammit. 

"Toto, what did happen this morning?" 

Toto gave out a little cut-off gasp through the phone. 

"I-" 

The tranquilizer was hitting in waves now.  A particularly strong wave of exhaustion swept Ron and his eyes rolled shut for a moment as he sagged back on the couch, taking the phone with him.  He snapped back into himself after a second. 

"We were talking before we got to the crime scene and then you just wouldn't answer.  I know that the park was small and there were a lot of people on the crime scene crew so you really couldn't talk to me, but you hung up on me mid-sentence." 

"I got to the crime scene and it's like you dropped off the face of the earth Ron!"  Toto had clearly recovered from his shock at the fact that he'd told Ron exactly what he was upset about. Then, the dam broke.  "Radio silence.  Not a sound, not a word, not even snoring Ron.  And even before then, it was weird.  You sounded off.  You had these big pauses before you'd answer me.  I've never known you to be unexcited about a crime scene.  If it wasn't the tranquilizers that happened this morning, then what was it? Because it scared me Ron." 

He heard nothing? 

Ron's mouth began running before his mind could catch up, "Toto, I literally made breakfast and had a shower and ate while you were on the phone with me.  There's no way you didn't hear me.  I spent half the morning worrying about how much noise I was making while you were trying to focus on the crime scene." 

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Ron realized it. "Oh Toto!  I'm sorry. I..." The words died on Ron's lips.  The phone dropped back onto the table with a clatter.

How am I supposed to explain what happened this morning?  It sounds ridiculous without context and he doesn't need to know about the dream.   He cannot know about the dream. 

"Ron?" Toto's voice was softer now. He'd been clued into the fact that Ron had sorted something out, that maybe he wasn't being called crazy for what he'd noticed during the morning's phone call. "What exactly happened Ron?" 

"I had been switching the call on and off mute.  I put in earphones so I could go take a shower and eat breakfast and I thought that I'd switched it off mute when I left the phone." 

"You think you left it on mute?"

"I'm almost sure I did now.  I'm sorry.  I feel awful" 

"Ron what was going on this morning?" 

Ron was silent.  The thought of telling Toto everything was choking him.  He didn't want to do it.  He thought that he had wanted to earlier, but he had been wrong. It was already too much to have Toto focused so closely on him like this.  Ron didn't care what he'd thought earlier, about Toto and his inability to prioritize his own feelings when it came to Ron, his inability to complain about Ron's behavior if it got in the way of what Ron wanted, about his own desperation to have Toto finally FINALLY see through to the problem that had been gnawing at him for the past few days.  Toto had gone from seemingly clueless about the tranquilizer situation to suddenly too knowledgeable, Toto's teeth may as well have been poised to pierce one of Ron's carotids at the slightest change in pressure.   Ron barely dared to breathe, much less speak.  The room was pitching and rolling around him, a staticky feeling to the edges of his vision.  He was nauseous with the feeling that if he so much as gave Toto a millimeter, he was going to bleed, profusely.  He'd hemorrhage out everything that he'd been trying to keep from Toto, the nightmares, the tranquilizers, the temptation to talk Toto into walking away for good so he'd be safe, the side effects, every single morally dubious thing he'd ever done, the way he'd known the whole time that he could never truly trust himself to be with Toto until he'd cut away every part of himself that could hurt the man.

He'd been quiet for too long.  His breathing the only thing that Toto had been getting through the phone. 

"You don't want to tell me." Toto stated, thoughtful. 

"There was something going on that you didn't want me to hear." he was puzzling away at Ron's situation. 

"Something before your shower and breakfast.   You'd just woken up when I called." 

"You're not avoiding telling me something about the students, or about a compromise to the safehouse.  Either of those you would have mentioned.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't the tranquilizers because you say that it wasn't." 

Ron sat quietly, a part of him wondering if this is what it had felt like for Toto the first time Ron had peeled apart the details of his appearance to tell him what exactly he'd been doing earlier in the day.  The thought should have felt stronger, he was sure he'd have been overwhelmed with pride if he was sober.  The tranquilizers blunted everything. 

Toto was quiet for a few seconds. 

"You know I know you have nightmares, right Ron?"

The blurry feeling that had been brushing at the edges of Ron's awareness suddenly made a grab for his whole body, hot and cold flashes along his arms and legs, like he'd had tiny lightning bolts discharging on the surfaces of them, a little like the electrical feeling he'd get in his legs once he'd stopped running after pushing himself too hard during one of his workout sessions. His lips were tingling in an awful way.

How? 

When did he find out?

What else does he know? 

Ron wanted to be sick.  This was something Toto wasn't supposed to know about at all. 

It's too much.  I can't talk about this with him.   Maybe I could with anyone else, but he cannot know what I'm seeing when I sleep.  He'd hate me if he knew I saw what I saw and then woke up and continued to let him be in danger the way I do.   Shit, I hate myself for letting him stay in danger like this. 

"Ron, it's okay."  Toto's voice sounded tinny as he continued talking. 

"Look, it's nothing to be ashamed of.  Really.  It's okay.  I've just noticed you having them a few of the times I've stayed over.  You don't need to tell me about them if you don't want to.  We can drop the whole topic entirely.  I'm sorry that I brought it up."

Ron didn't like the way that it was near impossible to focus on Toto's voice or the couch under him when the tranquilizers had him feeling so off balance.  Maybe he wasn't having to deal with the racing heart or the tight chest but something about being too out of his own body to ground himself was almost worse than being forced to be acutely aware of everything his body was doing. 

He had the presence of mind to grab the phone from the table top before he laid back on the couch in a last ditch effort to feel like he wasn't getting sucked away from the Earth's surface. 

The cat must have liked that.  Ron wasn't exactly sure where it had been before he laid back, but within seconds it was in his face sniffling at his nose before it deigned to lay down in a loaf on his chest.  Maybe he was imagining it, but the normally apathetic look in it's eyes seemed curious for a change. 

Surprisingly the cat helped with the feeling like he was being pulled into outer space thing. 

It was very uncharacteristic of the cat to be helpful. 

Once he felt a little like his brain and body were connected again, Ron decided that he was going to accept the cat's helpfulness as just another piece of the temporary insanity that his life had become as of late.  

The phone call hadn't ended in the time it took Ron to remember what it felt like to have a body.  

"It was a nightmare Toto." he managed to push out, voice as steady as he could get it. He didn't particularly want to acknowledge it, but Toto had been sitting patiently for goodness knows how long, "You took me by surprise, I didn't realize you knew about them." 

Ron felt tired.  He'd been feeling that way a lot recently. 

Toto sighed on the end of the phone.  He seemed to be doing that a lot recently. 

There was the sound of a car passing by from Toto's side of the phone. 

It was a horrible thing to be cut loose from everything that had anchored him the past year and a half.  Toto. Toto. Toto. Toto and his amazement at Ron's talent.  Toto and his single-minded determination do what was just, whether it was for the most boring cut-and-dry case in the world or something so dangerous that Ron would rather him run the other way.  Toto and his unstoppable faith in Ron's ability to do the right thing despite everything that Ron was and everything that had been done to him.  Toto and his naivety and care for others.   Toto and that flustered look on his face when Ron made a new identity to introduce himself to a new person. Toto and his choice to always go along with the outlandish schemes Ron came up with.  Toto and the serious confident air he had when he explained Ron's solutions. Toto and the unbroken promise to catch Ron whenever and wherever he fell: diving after doomed hypnotized culprits, calling Ron back from the edge he went over every time the suspect killing instinct switched on, convincing Ron to go on despite his fear of his capacity for destruction, carrying Ron back to the apartment when his meds took him down, and sitting at his side when he finally came up from his delirium as they wore off.  Toto was always unbreakable.  That had been the constant, the underlying thread that held everything together.  Ron had been frayed since he'd fled his apartment, he knew it, Toto knew it.  He hadn't thought too deeply about what the week had done to Toto. 

Toto sighed when he was exasperated at Ron, when he was trying to cover a laugh, when he was suddenly faced with cooking up a backstory to cover whatever foolishness had just come out of Ron's mouth, and when he watched Ron dump a "disgusting" amount of brown sugar syrup over his food.  There were other times Toto sighed too, when he was happy, when he took a bite of something he liked, when he dropped into a bath that was the perfect temperature, and when he was enjoying himself. But none of those sighs sounded like the one he had let out a moment ago.  

It was a world-weary sigh.  Ron's heart gave a jolting thud in his chest when he realized that Toto was fraying too. That constant unbreakable faith that Toto had in him and that held him together was at risk of falling apart. Not because of him necessarily, but because it was all too much.  The unsolvable cases, the bodies that were starting to pile up, the lack of faith that Toto had in his own decisions, Ron's lack of faith in himself, Ron's tranquilizers, and the place that they'd treated as home that had been suddenly designated off limits just a few days ago. 

Toto always held Ron together.  

But who's holding Toto together?  Ron felt cold as the thought settled in his mind. 

Ron was half sick thinking about it.  Toto and the uncertainty he'd shown when Ron had announced that he was going into hiding from the Detectives Alliance, as if Ron would leave him behind.  Toto being sent out to review crime scenes with only a hazy Ron on the call to provide deductions, soldiering through it even when Ron was dead to the world on the other side of the phone.  Toto managing all the logistics with the students since they'd arrived in Japan, begging Ron to let them help because he was afraid to miss critical information. Toto working, losing sleep, talking Ron down from all the fears and frustration he'd expressed over the past week.  Toto going home to that empty apartment that Ron knew he wasn't particularly fond of.  Ron had asked so much of Toto, since the very start but especially since this set of cases had started and what had Toto done? He just gave and gave and gave.  

Toto was fraying because he was overstretched.  Because he'd always shouldered the burden of keeping Ron on track, of protecting the suspects from Ron, of reminding Ron again and again that that he'd shown much more capacity for good than the evil he feared he was made to do.  Now he was doing that and trying to do what Ron had always done at crime scenes.  Ron suddenly found himself at a loss. Toto was well aware that he wasn't Ron when it came to finding the weak point in a case and cracking it open, yet he'd been pushing himself to do it anyway because Ron needed him to.  Ron had always left the encouraging and organizing to Toto because Toto did it well.  Ron had never fully considered the fact that he was no more capable of doing what Toto did than Toto was capable of doing what Ron did.  It had been sitting somewhere in the back of his mind covered up and unacknowledged because there'd never been a point when he'd needed to acknowledge it. Because Toto never gave up.

Toto was constant. Sure, Ron could solve a case, but who was there to explain it? to cut Ron off when he fell either to the suspect killing instinct or the medication he took to stop it?   He warmed Ron when his fears about his family, his past, and his future left him cold.   Even when they were facing impossible odds, up against the darkest things life could throw at them, even when he was bleeding out Toto had been Ron's light.   He'd never failed at it, no matter how much it took from him. 

This time, I've just left him to struggle with it all.  Haven't I? 

It was a horrible, earth-shattering realization and it came with a horrible new fear.  Ron had long feared losing Toto, first to the fallout of the suspect killing instinct, then to the Moriarty family's schemes, and finally to his own newfound freedom when he'd thought he was going to earn a detective's license.  He hadn't thought it possible to lose Toto to exhaustion and overwork, not when it had seemed that those were the two things that Toto had been immune to since they'd met.  But Toto was fraying and this was what had brought him to that point. 

Pull yourself together Ron.

If you can't do it for you, do it for him. He's taken on what you do, knowing it's impossible for him.  Try to do what he does. 

The cold and hard realization left Ron more grounded and with more clarity than he'd felt in a while.  It was jarring.  It'd been barely 30 seconds since he'd responded to Toto after his long silence.  He was still laid back on the couch, the cat sill resting on his chest staring at him curiously, there were still the ambient noises coming from Toto's side of the phone.   He felt like his whole world had been shifted, as if something that had been off had dropped into place and yet nothing around him had changed. 

"Sometimes I forget that there are moments when you know me better than I do Toto."  There was less effort needing to be put into making the words steady. 

"I'm sorry about this morning, I'm sorry I scared you.  I'd been avoiding telling you about the nightmares because..." There was an easy ending and a difficult ending he could give to the statement.  Ron chose the difficult one. "Because I was scared you'd hate me if I told you what I saw in them." 

There was a sharp intake of breath from Toto's side of the phone, "Ron, I could never do that, I could never hate you." 

"You've told me that so many times and in so many different ways that there's no way I don't know it. I still get scared about it.  I'm sorry.  And I'm sorry that the tranquilizers have worried you as much as they have.  I haven't been good about warning you when I'm using them and I've let you know near nothing about what they are.  It's not the same as when I started the medication from Dr. Mofu, you knew plenty about those." 

"Ron, I don't even know where they're from.  I'm not really sure what I need to worry about when you're using them." 

"I've had them for a long time, never had used them.  They were from a vet's office originally, but they've spent the better part of the past year in the back of my closet.  When I left my apartment I couldn't find my medication.  I grabbed them instead, in case." 

"Oh." Toto was quiet for a moment. Another car's engine passed by. "Then when the first murder happened you realized you could use them to stay at the safehouse."

"Right." 

"I think you've been able to figure out how I feel about them." 

"Yeah." 

There were things Toto was holding back from asking, Ron could feel it.   He felt pretty good about his stint of honesty, but he hoped Toto didn't push into why he had them originally. There were still things he didn't know how to say to Toto.  

"I think I'm starting to dislike them too, Toto.  I'm worried I might still need something if I have to stay in the safehouse, but the dose last night wasn't because I wanted to leave." 

"Hhm?" there was a tense energy to the sound. 

"I panicked and I took it for that." 

Toto sucked in a breath. 

"It kept me down for so long and I'm not sure why and the fact that I'd used them terrified me when I woke up. I am sorry."  Ron paused, then added, "I don't want to do it again.  I think I need to ask Dr. Mofu what to do instead and about getting more of my meds for when we solve this." 

"That sounds better.  I wish you'd told me before." said Toto. 

"I really wish I had too Toto. I'll get rid of these and then in the meantime... I'll just..." Ron paused.  That would be an issue.  He and Toto had no clue if or when the case would pick up pace. He stretched his arms for a moment. The cat didn't like that.  It tumbled onto the couch, gave Ron a scathing side-eye, and then jumped down under the coffee table.

"How much did you take tonight? Compared to last night." asked Toto. 

"Half as much" 

"Keep enough for one half dose.  That way you can use it if you need it if there's a new crime scene tomorrow and then I'll pick up what Dr. Mofu orders for you to use after that."  

Ron hadn't thought of that as the conversation had had him feeling off balance. It was unusual for Toto to be the one strategizing, a new addition onto the changes that had come up with him going alone to crime scenes.  Ron decided that he liked it, maybe Toto would keep doing that once things went back to normal.

"Okay." 

"What do I need to worry about?" 

"When I take it?" asked Ron. 

"Yeah"

"It could slow down my breathing too much, that might be hard for you to notice over the phone.  I think what you really need to worry about is if I become too confused, like I'm talking to you and I can't tell you who I am or if I slur my words too much for you to understand them." 

"Okay.  That's what I thought it would be."  Toto was quiet for a few seconds after he spoke before he continued, "That's what made me worry this morning.  When those tranquilizers put you to sleep you snore, you always snore. Then when your side of the line went silent this morning..." There was the click of Toto swallowing, "...I worried." 

Ron curled onto his side, he felt god-awful about what he'd done.  

How can I wake up every day terrified that Toto's going to die on me and then do this to him? 

"Oh Toto...." Ron couldn't find the words that he wanted to say after that. He was choking back what was threatening to be a sob. He hoped Toto could feel even half the affection and guilt and understanding he was trying to get across. 

Toto stayed quiet on his end of the phone.  Ron wished desperately that he could be wherever Toto was at the moment. 

It was a few minutes before he could talk again, "I can't promise I'm not going to do something stupid like this again, Toto." 

Toto let out a sad laugh and a sniffle. "I know you too well to ask that of you, Ron"

Ron pressed his lips together. It was a blunt thing for Toto to say, but it was honest.  He couldn't tell Toto what he wanted to hear, just as much as Toto couldn't tell him that they'd both be making it out of the current case unscathed. But he could give him this,  "I can promise it's not going to be any time soon though." He went on, "We'll be wrapped up in some ridiculous case who-knows-how-long from now with this mess so far away that it's just a distant memory. And I'll get some crazy idea in my head, and don't you know it, I'll get myself in trouble."

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't Ron." Toto sounded calmer. 

"What kind of partner would I be if I let you get bored Toto?" 

Toto laughed, "Not the kind I want." There was an affection in Toto's voice that made Ron's heart squeeze in a way that hurt just a little bit. 

Ron sighed, content. 

A partner and a case. It almost seems greedy to ask for anything more than this in life.

He finally opened his text messages to get a look at the photos that Toto had sent him from the forensics lab.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

He kept trying to figure out where the clue was supposed to lead. 

The appearance of the wounds themselves, like shiny pink pearls on a string, that's her clue. 

But that pink, the color of the flesh where the skin was destroyed, it's too far off from a pastel. Pearls don't really come in vibrant colors.  Maybe beads?

But beads... that's too non-specific. 

Jewelry then?

Still too non-specific. 

And that line of thought still brings it back to pearls, doesn't it? 

What other actual jewelry has that look?

Ron got up and made his way downstairs. 

It's not exactly a large sample.  But it's something.

That table case he'd just been combing through had a fair amount of jewelry in it. 

It was a stretch to expect something in the case to make him remember a piece of information he hadn't already combed over, but there was a chance. 

He slid the lid open again. 

The necklaces that were there didn't yield much in the way of useful information. 

Dainty chains, mostly smaller pendants, a few larger statement necklaces.   Nothing that looked particularly similar to the wounds.  Nothing that made him think of something new. 

The bracelets weren't much better.  There was more variety.  Stones other than the cut facets that had been overwhelmingly common in the necklaces.  Pieces that were more substantial, bangles, cuff bracelets, a few with charms on a chain. Tarnished gold and silver. 

It seemed trivial to look at the rings.  What he would find there was unlikely to yield results.  But he was already downstairs. He let his eyes drift over the rings in the case as he considered the possibility that maybe the woman that had been found this morning had jewelry on.   He'd need to ask Toto when he woke back up. 

Some simple bands, a few bands with decorations carved into them, bands with inlaid cut stones, bands with a full setting of gems in several colors, a few rings with large polished chunks of stone set into them: turquoise, agates.  And a ring with a small rounded stone mounted on it, perfectly smooth, shiny, coral blush pink. It wasn't far off from the color of the beds of the wounds from the forensics photos. The finish on the stone made it almost look wet with how the light reflected off of it, unsettlingly similar to the dewy appearance of open flesh.

Ron picked it up, and pulled at the tag attached to the back. 

Queen conch pearl ring ....

The price on the tag had Ron widening his eyes. 

He set it back down. 

Ron needed to consider the frankly, ridiculous situation he found himself in. 

Was he aware that things other than oysters made pearls?

Yes. That was certainly information that he'd seen at some point in the past. 

Was he willing to go down a rabbit hole on the off-chance that Alice had specifically set up the crime scene to lead him to the conclusion that the injuries looked a little like conch pearls on a string?

Ron wasn't sure.

Pearls had been my first thought...

Mostly because the wounds were about that size.  And most jewelry that had that shape to it was made of pearls. 

Ron went back upstairs.

He wasn't even sure he wanted to share his 'findings' with Toto. 

They were that disappointing. 

He didn't know all that much about conchs.  He hadn't really known they made pearls.

Certainly not ones that looked like that.

He decided to look up conch pearls after picking up his phone again.  

The images results finally loaded.  The internet at the secondhand store was truly god awful sometimes. 

The results made his mouth go dry. That pearl in the case downstairs was not an outlier.   A full page of results, photos packed with pearls that same fleshy shade.  Rare instances of slightly lighter pinks, a few almost orangey yellows. 

Those orange yellow pearls are almost a perfect match for the nearly honey colored blisters that had popped up along the edges of the wounds. 

Well, I'll be damned. 

Two days of color coding and I'm some kind of expert.  

Those two shades really do match. 

Ron sighed. 

He didn't know what to do with this information. 

Wasn't sure this was even information worth having or if once again he was reaching for and pulling at strings that had no connection to the case. 

He settled back against the couch. 

And thought. 

Say I'm Alice,  I'm creating a string of cases that should be near impossible to solve.  I leave hints at each crime scene offering those solving it a chance to catch up and stop the next murder before it happens. 

I've gone through the trouble of recreating a sting from a sea creature on one of my victims for the express purpose of having the way the wound looks be the clue for the next crime scene. 

This is already niche information.  I know it because I may as well be a wildlife expert.  On some level, I expect Ron to know it because he is the person I want solving the case. 

How likely am I to choose a similarly niche piece of information to be the clue that the prior one points to? 

What do I hope to achieve by doing that? 

If that is what I am doing, what do I expect the next stop on the detective's train of thought to be? 

Poison to jellyfish to Blue bottle to string of pearls to pink pearls to conch to ... ???

We started at poison, something general, then zoomed in to jellyfish, in more to blue bottle, and finally most specific with the appearance of the wound. Now working outwards, most specific, pink pearls, next is less specific- the source of the pearls : conch. 

So zoom one step out from there...

A conch is a snail. 

Then out again...

Or... 

At the start, the jump of poison to jellyfish would have been what was at the crime scene: poison, to the creature creating the poison: jellyfish (or what I had anticipated being the source of the poison). 

What it was - to the source of the thing - to a more specific category of the source - to what the thing the animal made looked like -  to what the thing looked like  - to the animal that produced to the item - to the category that the animal fell into... to.... to what it was... or what I will find at the crime scene? 

Or are we back to poison? 

Snail poison? 

Was this a clue about what I should have expected to find at the third crime scene? 

Do snails have poison? 

Some must...

The current train of thought was frustrating.

Alice's specialty was veering too deeply into non-general information. 

Ron had an extensive knowledge of a great many things.  He'd studied so much when learning how to be a detective: languages, martial arts, human biology, psychology, logic, weapons, pharmacology, forensics, and law. He'd gone and learnt about astronomy because it had interested him. He had hobbies that had dragged him into an interest in arts like sewing, cooking, and knitting.  And of course those things had forced him to get a working knowledge of chemistry when he'd started trying to experiment with his projects as he'd gotten more advanced with his hobbies.  He'd gone and learnt about climate, geology, cultures, and plants because that kind of information was frequently vital for cracking open cases chock full of little details that someone else had missed.  He hadn't spent much time on non-human biology as that had been a little far outside the realm of detective work and hadn't properly intersected with any of his other hobbies. 

All of the information he needed to know about animals for this case was putting Ron out of his depth. 

Does Alice know I wouldn't know this? 

Does Alice expect that I do know this? 

Is the information I'm pulling at too far outside the realm of things Alice would expect me to be able to deduct at a crime scene? 

Is the fun part for her putting information she thinks I won't be able to catch until it's too late? 

She's a teenager.  Does Alice even understand that what is common knowledge to her might not be common knowledge to me even though we are both extremely intelligent people? Is she still young enough to assume that people share her perspective, that they are going to know the things she knows just because she knows them? 

Alice would know this though.  Knowing what we know about her, it's like what Toto said earlier.  This all is so within Alice's depth, her understanding, her interests. 

Ron grumbled. 

Snail poison. 

He opened the search on his phone again, looked it up. 

It irritated him a little, that he had to go looking for information that he felt that he should have known just to make progress with the case. 

The result: Cone snails. 

Cone snails. 

They make venom. 

I wonder what kind. 

We have the third victim, no forensics, but I can make some deductions off of how she looked at the crime scene. 

Maybe enough to approve or disprove the current train of thought I have running, if the way she died is consistent with cone snail venom, I can call this deduction a possible success...

He clicked into an article on cone snails and skimmed it. 

950 species of cone snails. 

Each with a unique venom, some deadly to humans, some not. 

No unifying feature of the venoms, many had varying functions, affected different parts of the body. 

I have no way of knowing I'm right until I get forensics.

If I'm right about this at all...

She had a good laugh when she decided she'd give me a clue that went nowhere. 

Or specifically, a clue that ended in a fork in the road that ran 900 different directions.

I could be right.  Victim 3 might have died of cone snail venom, but that doesn't mean anything.  I have no way of knowing or even testing that at this point. 

Is this something she would do? 

Maybe...

Would it be very exciting for her to watch me solve a clue that took me nowhere...

Probably not.  

I need to take a few steps back. 

Before cone snails. 

Before snail poison.

Back to just snails. 

I made an assumption that the next logical jump was back to poison. 

It might not be. 

Snails....

...

...

... are slow. 

Slow.

Huh.

What Toto said last night...

'Tomorrow it will be 48 hours since the second victim. The first and the second were only a few hours apart'

'It's weird isn't it.' 

'If we didn't know there were two more, I'd almost want to believe that figuring out who the perpetrator of the first one was enough for Alice to decide we'd solved it.'

'That would be nice, wouldn't it.  Completely unlike the Moriartys though.'

'At this point the whole this is, isn't it?  We've never had a timeline for one of these stretch out so much.' 

The case had run slow since the second victim. 

The 48 hour break between victims. 

Had she been communicating that the cases would slow down? 

Was that the clue? 

The poisoning had been slow too with Victim 2...

A death stretched out over hours rather than seconds or minutes. 

One potential clue pointing to the possibility of the case slowing down and one undeniable fact about the second crime that could suggest the possibility that things would be slowing down. 

If this is what it means... why warn me? 

Why slow down the cases anyway? 

We'd thought maybe that the extra time could guarantee loss of evidence...

It might be true, but I need to know more first.

I still haven't asked Toto about the specifics of victim 1. 

And he didn't send anything over because I asked him not to until I'd had a chance to analyze the pictures alone. 

Toto let out another sleepy hum through the speaker of Ron's phone. 

And now he's asleep. 

And I don't have the heart to wake him up with how bad this week has been to him.   He needs the rest. 

Ron was struck by a stab of homesickness for a few seconds. Toto was laying curled up on the futons at his apartment, most likely more relaxed than he'd been in days. He missed being there; living that sliver of the day when Toto would walk in and he'd get to say 'welcome back' and it would be a little like he'd just watched the weight of the world drop right off of Toto's shoulders. The way Toto's eyes softened, the way Ron got to see Toto's personality slide from the version of himself he was at work to the version of himself that he was at home over the course of a few minutes as Toto went through the motions of taking off his shoes, hanging his blazer up, emptying his pockets.  Ron wondered if Toto had his blazer on now, his belt? his tie?   Had he bothered dressing again as if he was going back out after he'd stripped all of it off in search of a mic? Or had he hung those things up, put them away where they normally were kept? Had Toto buttoned the shirt back up or discarded it in favor of his undershirt?  Or was most of his outfit still strewn across the floor of sloth even now as he slept because he'd been too tired to put it all away?  It was the mundane things like this that Ron hadn't thought it was possible to care about, much less find important, before Toto had shown up. But now the questions held his attention the way a case would. Did Toto treat Ron's apartment like home even if Ron wasn't there? Did he go through the motions like it was home?  Was he comfortable or had he gone and collapsed in a tired heap in a way that would leave him feeling stiff when he woke up? 

Ron ached to be back in his apartment, on his futon, next to his... Toto. 

He sighed. 

The only way out of this is through it. 

He turned his attention back to the case. 

Time and loss of evidence. 

What kind of evidence can disappear with time? 

Poisons could degrade if they were in the right setting. 

The discarded items from victim 1 and 2: the shoes, hat, murder weapon, and drawing could all have been taken away or destroyed if Victim 2 had dumped them in a garbage can somewhere or someone else had discarded them. 

The spray paint that had marked victim 1's murder likely had faded by now if it hadn't already been removed by the crime scene crew or a groundskeeper. 

Forty eight hours. 

So much could happen in that kind of time. 

With just three hours, the second victim had left one crime scene carrying critical clues, discarded these items, and traveled to the second crime scene. 

With forty eight hours... There was no way of knowing who or what had been moved, destroyed, or set up for a later part of the murder plot.

What could Alice have anticipated happening?  What are things that she would have assumed were a given? 

The police would be called, crime scenes documented, bodies collected and taken to the morgue. 

Police would have been called quickly.  Crime scenes would have been documented as soon as possible and information filed expediently. That information would not be changing once collected and filed, so that was outside of the realm of things that could be altered by the passage of time between victims. 

Bodies collected and taken to the morgue. 

Bodies changed. 

No matter how cold they were kept, dead bodies were not immune to the passage of time. 

So if Alice wanted to have evidence that disappeared in the long gap between victims 2 and 3, it either was not at the crime scene at the time that police arrived or was in or on the bodies.

It had been fairly warm the afternoon that the second victim had been found. 

That's why he'd sweated and the film had melted.  

The movement from the warm air outside to the cold of the lockers in the morgue would have made the remaining humidity on the body condense.  That extra liquid could have melted the last of the film sewn into the seams. 

Maybe it was supposed to. 

Had Alice's intention been to disappear the film on the body if I was unable to catch the clue at the crime scene itself? 

She hadn't factored in Toto, had she?  If I'm not dragging him away from a crime scene, he takes a little longer to get things in order, get the body sent to the morgue.  It must have taken enough time that more liquid evaporated off the body than she anticipated. 

There wasn't enough left to condense and disappear the last of the film when it went into cold storage at the morgue. 

Toto's glacial pace at the crime scene's the only reason why we got what we did from forensics. 

No film left and it would have been even more confusing than it was, we might have all been hopelessly lost.  It would have been near impossible to solve at that point, so if things had gone to her plan we shouldn't have been able to identify the source of the poison today. 

She gave us a single, possible time sensitive clue. 

A single possible time sensitive clue, that pointed to a warning that the case would be pausing? 

If I had caught it then, at the crime scene, rather than 48 hours down the line,  what would have been the outcome? What would have been my reward for catching that? 

What could she gain by letting me know that I had 48 free hours to try and catch up to her? 

Ron took a look around the loft. 

The piles of partially sorted clothing, eccentricities, antiques, and accessories. The things he'd resorted to doing to kill time as he'd waited for clues, puzzled through the information he got through the phone.  The stack of laundry he'd folded earlier that afternoon after he'd dried it.  His futon and blanket stacked neatly in a corner of the room. 

He understood what she had been trying to do by slowing down the case. 

She wants me to feel despair. 

Just like Milo did.

There was no way that Alice was unaware of the five years of his life that Ron had spent rotting in his apartment: isolated, depressed, and bored out of his mind.  

Milo might have been dead when she reappeared, but Dan would have been alive and in contact with her. It was something she would have been able to learn about from him.

She wanted to put me back there, just for a little while. She wanted me to feel how I did back then. And she wanted me to know that she was doing it. 

 She might not know where I am, but she knows that I would be at the crime scenes if I could be.  She clearly has extensive knowledge of what the Detective's Alliance is up to with her involvement the branch leader killings.  She would know that I'm in hiding. 

So she starts a string of cases with two murders back to back.  Both of them as confusing and ambiguous as possible, both toeing the line between far too little available information and way too much information to draw meaningful deductions from.  She leaves a warning that there's going to be a pause after the two of them, for an indeterminate amount of time.  Knowing that I'm unable to draw conclusions from the information I do have about them, because that's how she constructed them to be.   If we'd caught this that day...  

I would have... 

The idea of staying here indefinitely, knowing that there would be no new information to occupy me...

Ron felt sick, thinking about what the past two days would have looked like if he'd known. 

There'd been those times, back in his isolation, when one of the tenants would accidentally let slip something interesting, something that pointed to a mystery, when they stopped by to bring him things or request maintenance on their units.  There'd been that desperation that overwhelmed him, the need to learn more, to leave the apartment, and then the overwhelming fear of what would come if he did, of what he'd do.  The only fix he'd come up with over the years had been heavy doses of sedatives.  The maximum dose that could be taken never kept him down enough time for the desperation to make its way completely out of his system. He'd wake up in a twilight blur of awareness and only chug water and check the clock before shoving a few more pills down his throat to kill whatever hours were needed to make the interest fade, to let that ember of excitement burn out, to let the dark settle in again.  He hadn't resorted to something that drastic in years, but there wasn't much of a question in his mind that that was what it would have come to if he'd known that there would have been a pause in the cases.  

The stress of the other M family serial murders: the never-ending feeling of being on edge, of waiting for the next body to drop, the feverish rush for information that normally propelled his every move in those cases, the minutes that stretched and stretched and stretched with all the information, all the thoughts, he crammed into them in his desperate effort to cut the cases off before they worsened.  The last two days had been torture: the constant swing between cramming minutes full of deductions and trying desperately to fill the time until the next body appeared. Always believing that it could have been any minute. Always on edge, always alert, always expecting the next move from Alice.  If he'd known that he was guaranteed so much as even an hour's reprieve from the risk of a new body, he'd have been crawling in his own skin to leave the safehouse.  Trapped with the knowledge that the stakes were the same as in the past, but that his hands were tied, that there was nothing new coming to him.  He didn't have the sedatives he'd had back then, all those years ago, but he would have made the tranquilizers work for him.  He'd told Toto that the doses he'd taken when he listened through the phone at crime scenes were heavy, but those would have looked like near-nothing compared to what he knew he would have resorted to if he'd known there was nothing to stay awake for, if there was only a waiting game trapped in these four walls to look forward to.

Toto truly would have hated him by the end of it. 

No matter what it was that he told Ron. 

Ron was sure of that. 

If it was not the utter absence of affection for Ron that Ron would find in Toto upon waking up, then he was certain that at the very least it would be Toto's faith in him that was gone.

And that would have been the end of him. 

He would have starved for information if it was hatred that he woke to. Toto's phone would have been off.  Ron would have broken himself out of the safehouse to attempt the solution to the case and would have found himself in the Alliance's hands before he solved it. 

If it had been a loss of faith that he woke to, Ron was fairly certain that all the information in the world would not been able to drag him into producing a solution to the case. Something in him would be permanently broken if... if he woke to find Toto empty of faith, that thing that always kept Toto looking forward even where others gave up, that thing that Ron knew himself to be completely incapable of producing on his own.

The thought that a simple mistake on Alice's part, to overestimate the amount of information Toto would catch on his own, was all that had protected him.  The thought that she knew his weaknesses well enough to recognize how something as simple as leaving him time to wait and letting him know about it could end him.  The feeling was cold and wrong like a scalpel in someone else's hand running the length of one of his veins, being able to taste the metal from the blade even as it was buried in his arm, being unable to shiver as the hard metal table siphoned the warmth from his body. Ron felt like he was just realizing he was the subject of a dissection that was half finished.

Wrong.

Wrong.

I want it to be wrong. 

Be wrong. 

Be wrong.

Be wrong.

If Alice's inability to predict Toto's behavior was all that stood between the plans she'd made and the reality where those plans came to fruition... 

If he's a wild card that she cannot control. 

Even when she is able to predict my behavior to a tee... 

She'd have no trouble guaranteeing her success with just one move...

Ron had known that Toto had been a target of the M family since the case at the auberge, but if he was so much as partially right about the clue... Toto had gone from a target, to THE target. 

Ron found himself standing at one of the windows, blinds pushed up by one hand.  His eyes were scanning the near empty streets around the second-hand store. 

He didn't remember getting up from his place on the rug. 

His legs had the feeling in them like he'd been pacing for some time and had just come to a stop.  His brain knew that he was at a standstill, his body still felt like it was moving forward. 

The phone was sitting on the coffee table, near the couch. 

He let the blinds down quietly and picked up the phone when he sat back down. 

He could barely hear Toto's slow quiet breaths on the other side of the line. 

If I told this to Toto right now... what would he say? 

That he's not worried about his life? about the danger he might be in? 

That I can't be sure of the deduction I've pulled together? 

Would he be so confident in me to take the two deductions at face value? 

If not... which would he find more compelling? 

How would I explain this the thought process to him?  How would I argue my case for the clues I've strung together? 

Is there a simpler solution to the way that wound looks? 

Back.

Back.

Back.

All the way back. 

Before we knew the identity of the poison. 

Assume the opposite assumption that I made before. 

Before, Alice expected me to have an incredibly niche working knowledge of sea life, including sea life that isn't found remotely near Japan. 

Now, Alice assumes I know little to nothing about sea life. 

I'm not thinking about jellyfish, I'm not thinking about pearls. 

I'm looking at that wound around the neck, around the arms. Those are the two most conspicuous areas when looking straight down at the corpse.  Those are the two areas that I could have seen easiest at the crime scene itself, the location that I believe I was supposed to see those marks. 

What do I think of? 

A necklace, a pair of bracelets. 

The skin reaction someone gets when they have an allergy to nickel and they put on cheap jewelry. 

Does it make a difference that the body I'm looking at is a man? 

Would that change how I perceive the wounds?  The locations that they sit? 

What else puts down wounds in those places?  Other than seams, other than jewelry? 

... restraints. 

... this is only the second victim of the four we'd been told to expect.

That day we didn't know to expect four victims. 

We went from one strange murder with a possible link to Alice to two, over the course of a few hours. 

The normal reaction would have been to refer to them as a pair. 

But that's not what we did. 

That's not the expectation I came up with once the second body was found. 

The conclusion drawn upon the appearance of the second was that there would be a third. 

A chain. 

Are the wounds chains? 

The beaded texture, string of pearls.

Did I misinterpret it? 

Should I have been thinking of the links of a chain? 
.
.
.

She was going to pause the cases. 

That much we know to be true because our third body didn't show until this morning. 

The easy assumption...

The one Toto and I pushed aside as wishful thinking, was that the murders were going to end with the second victim. 

Two consecutive murders, a pause, but she didn't want us to get too confident that we'd solved it.  So she left a clue that the murders were part of a chain of murders. 

If there had been three bodies before the pause the chain clue wouldn't have been necessary.  We could have had a third murder that demonstrated the link that Toto and I had assumed was there all along.  The perpetrator of one is the victim of the next.  We knew the second victim killed the first.  We assumed it was possible that the third victim would be the second victim's killer, but with no third victim there was no way to confirm that. 

I was supposed to find the wounds on the second victim that day. 

It would have told me that the cases were going to be a chain, linked the way I expected them to be, and I'd know that even without the appearance of the third victim if I interpreted the clue correctly. 

Finally something I can try to test, an interpretation that leaves an opening to prove or disprove without completed forensics. 

The murder of the second victim. 

There's so many points along the timeline of events that produced that murder weapon that the third victim could fit in. 

But let's follow the pattern that's been set. 

We have no guarantee that the first victim's killer was involved with anything but the handling of the murder weapon that was used. 

So what event would have placed victim three in a similar position? 

Something at the tail end of the process of creating a weapon like that.

She probably didn't procure the blue bottle poison. 

Probably didn't produce the film that the poison was mixed into. 

Both of those steps require too many supplies, too much time, for what we understand to be true about the victims.  If they really have just recently fled to Japan. 

The film would have needed to be sewn into one of the standard issue undershirts used by the crime scene crews. 

The film could have been sent here to be used, as could the special thread, but the shirt would have needed to be taken from the police force here. 

The third victim could have sewn the film into the shirt. 

Could she be a seamstress?  Her age, like the students pointed out, makes it seem like she'd be uninvolved with a crime family. 

But as a seamstress, her age would not be a weakness, but a strength.  Every year onto her life is a year of experience she's had with her craft.  

A family known for staging unsolvable cases needs clothing that isn't factory-made, but looks close enough to factory-made clothing to make its source ambiguous.

Factory made clothing can be traced, can be a valuable clue when trying to put an identity or a national origin to an unnamed victim or an unidentifiable body. 

The solution to this is to use bespoke clothing as much as possible when there must be clothing left behind. To use threads and fabrics that cannot be traced to their production source.  Sure, a factory owner could be paid off, but there's no guarantee that they'd never speak, never let slip something they shouldn't have.  Something that was produced from raw materials by an employee, a member of the family, wouldn't be able to be traced to its source, no matter where an investigative team went looking for answers. 

She's a seamstress. 

How do I prove it? 

"Toto?" 

Another slow breath through the phone. 

"Toto!"

A hum in response.

"Toto wake up." 

Toto sounded more than half asleep as he slurred out, "I'm too tired for dinner Ron, let me sleep." 

"Toto this is not about dinner."

"I don't have any cold cases for you, Ron.", Toto said, distorted by a yawn.

"People are dying Toto, WAKE UP!"

An incredibly loud anxious noise, followed by a groan as conscious Toto made his appearance.

"Huh?" 

"You sleep like the dead Toto." Ron complained.

"You better not have woken me up just to say that, Ron, I swear." 

Toto was in a mood.

Not one that Ron liked.

He offered a distraction, "I have possible solutions." 

"Solutions? Not solution?" Confusion overtook the grumpiness that had been in Toto's voice before.

"There's options." 

"Huh."  There was rustling from Toto's side of the phone and an aggressive yawn.  Ron imagined that he'd sat up from his place on the futon. 

"I have a couple running theories right now. The clue with the wounds on the second victim was the appearance, the way they looked. The way they looked wasn't unintentional or just a feature of the poison used, there was real effort put into making them look that way."

"She went out of her way to do it?" 

"Had to."  

"Hmmm..." 

"I'll explain it in a minute. Just...  did you send me all the pictures you had of the third victim this morning?" 

There was a groan from Toto's side of the phone.  It was a little different than the one he'd normally make when he was trying to think while his brain warmed up.  Ron didn't put too much thought into that. 

"I got a few I didn't send.  I kind of sent the ones I did in a rush." 

"Okay good! You have any of her hands?"

"Her hands?"

"I'll even go for lower arms and hands at this point, Toto." 

"Specific... Hmmm..."

Ron waited. 

"No, no hands." 

Ron cringed for a moment. Toto was tired. Toto was half-asleep.  Toto was fresh off of a 13-hour shift.  And Ron was about to send Toto on an errand. 

"We're going on a trip Toto!" he put excitement into the sentence that he didn't really feel.  Toto was not about to be pleased. 

"You sure you can't send the kids on this one?" 

"Nope!  They'd never get in!" 

"To where?"

"The forensics lab!!!!" 

"Ugh... you don't have to sound so excited about it Ron....  You're sending me all the way back to look at her hands?"

"Unless you have a very specific memory of what her hands looked like, yes." 

"They looked like hands." 

"Then we're going back to the lab!" 

"If I run into one of those alliance tails while we're out on this errand I'm going to have something for them." Toto grumbled under his breath. 

Ron laughed. "If I'd known all it took for you to take out my surveillance was a badly timed trip to the forensics lab I'd have sent you days ago." 

Toto let out a surprised noise. 

Oh that was an inside thought? Not a joke? 

Ron started laughing even harder.  

Toto you're always full of surprises. I'd have never thought you'd think that and mean it. 

There was rustling, the jingle of a belt buckle.

Toto was dressing.

He'd been too tired to put up his clothes after discarding them. 

"Toto!" 

"Hmm?" 

"You know what would look nice?" 

"What Ron?" Toto sounded weary. 

"I had your grey blazer cleaned.  You should wear it.  It's in my room."

"You know, I was anticipating something so much worse..." 

"I'm being an adult for a change" 

"Uh huh..." the noise betrayed pure suspicion, "What'd you do to my blazer Ron?   You know I like that one right?" 

There was the thump-thump of Toto's socked feet on the part of the floor that wasn't covered with futons. 

"I just cleaned it! Besides, the one you had on is all wrinkled now isn't it?" 

There was a one of those disbelieving laughs from Toto that really was just a voiceless sound that he huffed out quickly. 

Ron heard the door to his room open.

I really need to sell this...

Maybe if Toto is as sleepy as he sounds...

"And the forensics lab is so damp and this blazer doesn't show it if you get it a little wet, so you won't have to worry about whatever nasty damp stuff you get on you from pulling out the body at the lab." 

Toto yawned. "You know I wear gloves and a lab coat there Ron...."  

There was the clack of a hanger being pulled of the hook. "It looks normal..."  was said in a slightly disbelieving tone.

"I just cleaned it Toto." 

"There's a mic in this one now, isn't there."

It clicked for him. He's too awake.

Ron was disappointed that Toto had caught on so quickly. 

"I'm going to keep you on the phone in there, you won't be missing anything Ron."  

"I know... but Toto... Please." 

"It's warm out today Ron.  I don't really even need a blazer now that work's over." 

"I... can you at least carry it with you?" 

Ron was showing more desperation than he'd like.  

He just needs to wear it. 

Just in case I'm wrong.

Ron was pushing against the idea of telling Toto the second interpretation of the clue.  He already knew that Toto would be opposed to worrying about it the way that Ron was right now.

"Seriously Ron..."

"Just in case? What if your phone dies? What if you need to call the students?" 

Toto sighed.

"I'll carry it with me.  Thank you for cleaning it.  You're taking the mic out of it when this case is over. I like this one too much."

Ron could concede to this point. 

"Fair enough." 

"You're not backing out on that later either Ron, say it like you mean it." 

"I'll take the mic out of it.  It will be as good as new." 

"Good." 

There was a rustle as it sounded like Toto threw the blazer over one of his arms. 

It's not ideal...

The mic runs to Spitz, then me, so if we need it he'll need to be involved...

If we wind up needing it, he'd probably have to be involved anyway. 

Keys jingled and there was other noise on the other end of the phone.  Toto was gathering his things. 

"So we need to see her hands?" 

"Mhm." 

"How's that connect to the wounds on the second victim?  Or is this related to something different?"

"It's related to the second victim.  You didn't get any of the forensics of the first victim back to me. What are we looking at there?" 

A door shut and keys jingled in a lock. 

"Nothing as interesting as the second victim. It looks like the venom was injected through the site we found on the hand. Going in a the base of the thumb, up toward the end of the fingers, apparently they could tell the needle went all the way into the muscle of that area of the hand on autopsy, something in the poison made that area look different.  They haven't been able to isolate it the way that they did with victim two because we don't have the source of it, but apparently it looked like a very high dose of a venom that targeted nerves, muscles, and the heart." 

"What'd he die of?" 

"Something stopped the heart.  They said there wasn't any visible structural issues there, so whatever happened to him happened quickly." 

The elevator dinged.

"Hmmm." 

"I still don't understand why he had the scratches on his throat or the vomit." 

"Probably a lethal arrythmia." 

"Hmm?" 

"If the venom was toxic to muscles, the heart, and nerves, then the first damage would have happened to the muscles in the hand that was injected.  The toxin would have hit the blood stream and immediately made its way to the heart.  That's where the effects on the nerves becomes important.  He probably had issues with his arm from the neurotoxin, but that's not going to kill him,  The neurotoxin in the heart will."

"Not the toxin that effects the heart?"

"No... well... the difference between toxins that affect the heart and toxins that affect the nerves can be almost nonexistent in some cases.  There are toxins that affect the heart and take a while to do the damage they're going to do, ones that change blood pressure, ones that damage the heart muscle.   The toxins that would do what was probably done to the first victim would likely function as both a cardiotoxic and neurotoxic substance...  The heart and nerves both run on what basically amounts to electricity.  That electricity is the product of the movement of certain ions between different areas of the heart or nerve cells.  The way to stop a heart from beating or ruin the messages that a nerve is trying to send is in changing the way that the ions that normally power them move.  The toxin that actually killed the victim was probably one that targeted potassium ions, they're one of the most important for the heart and nerves."

"Huh." 

"So the toxin interrupted the normal electrical system in the heart, the heart changed from a normal rhythm to one that's lethal."

"And the scratches and vomit?"

"Something like a lethal heart rhythm generally is not very comfortable, it's not uncommon for the feeling to make someone vomit or pass out. The scratches probably were because he felt like he wasn't able to breathe for the short amount of time before his heart went from the lethal rhythm to stopping." 

"Hmm...  And that would have happened quickly?" 

"Could have taken anywhere from a few seconds to about ten minutes to get him on the ground unconscious depending on how fast the heart went out of rhythm into something fatal. It would have taken him a little longer to actually die, but since no one started resuscitation on him he may as well have been dead from the moment he hit the ground. 

Toto's breath came out in a quiet hiss, the only indication of how unsettling he found the situation. 

"Nothing else on him?"

"Nothing new, nothing that changes what we know.  His fingerprints got sent through a few other databases with no hits.  They're considering saving DNA samples from him if they continue to have issues getting his identity in case they need to use it to find familial matches.   They said there was something off with the back of his eyes, so your deduction about him being blind was very likely correct. No new items of interest found on his person." 

"Anything interesting about his clothes?" 

"His clothes?" 

"Just anything of note from the crime scene itself.  Did you see his clothes again when you went to the forensics lab?"

"I don't remember anything particular from the crime scene, nothing flashy, no designer brands or anything, and nothing that stood out for looking out of season.  They already had him undressed and the body opened up by the time I made it to the lab, so I didn't see the clothes earlier today." 

"Hmmm." 

No designer brands. That's one point in favor of my theory about the clothing. 

"Is there something you're looking for on them?" 

"I don't know about anything specific I'm expecting to find.  I'm just curious about them.  If they have them bagged up somewhere in the forensics lab, I think we should take a look at them too."

I'm expecting to find something absent from them. 

Ron wasn't entirely sure why he was avoiding telling Toto what he thought he might see just yet.   Maybe it was something about having three interpretations of the information with none of them looking particularly more reliable than the others.  He wasn't used to giving deductions with this kind of uncertainty in them to Toto. 

Toto sighed, "At this point I really should have just called you while I was there, huh?" 

"Wouldn't have hurt..." Ron commented, "You're going to love this, but I'm probably going to have you pull out every body that we have so far just so we can do another look over them." 

Toto groaned, "You know the normal staff leaves the lab at the end of the day so I'm going to be doing this on my own.  I expect compensation for what this is about to do to my back Ron." 

Ron was certain that on another day he would have had more control of what his mind did with Toto's statement, however, that was not the case today, "I'm sure we can come to some kind of arrangement for that Toto." 

"Stop sounding so .... Ugh!  Ron!" 

Ron could almost hear the dark pink flush that had risen across the tops of Toto's cheeks and backs of his ears in his voice. It was difficult not to let out a self-satisfied laugh at the reaction. 

"What's wrong Toto?", Ron's voice and the conversation were quickly slipping into dangerous territory, "What exactly did I say that you didn't like the sound of?..  Last time you didn't sound so-"

"Kamonohashi. Do. Not. Think. For. A. Second. I. Will. Not. Turn. Around. And. Go. Back. To. The. Apartment." And then whispered out sharply, "Behave!"  

He could see the face Toto was making at the moment; even though Toto was across the city and the little bit of Toto that Ron was getting was limited to the man's distorted voice through the phone speaker. He'd seen that look probably a hundred times before: after being pulled into an alley or hall somewhere out of the way in those fleeting moments of time between solving a case and getting done whispering the solution to Toto, pointed at him behind one of their friends' backs after he'd said (or done) something a little too forward, in the middle of long train rides when his hand had somehow slipped down onto Toto's thigh without him realizing it, and across rooms full of people when Toto caught Ron staring with a look to him that had no business being public.  It was a face that yelled, "Stop dangling what I want right in reach, knowing that I have to refuse it right now. Cut it out before we both find out what happens when my self-control runs out".  Ron had long found himself somewhat desperate to know what would happen if Toto's sense of self control did break. 

Ron knew what he was supposed to do in reaction to this, but his sense of self preservation been worn down to a fine thread, "What'd I-"

"No. Stop it. Put that voice you're using away Ron. You're nothing but trouble when you sound like that." 

Unfortunately, making Toto flustered was not a good enough reason to throw away an entire evening worth of work on the case. 

Ron sighed. 

"Oh thank goodness." breathed out Toto. 

It was a little like Toto could read his mind, the way that he knew that the sigh marked the end of Ron intentionally being a menace.

"Stop whatever the hell that was and focus on the case Ron.  People are dying." 

Oh, he's pissed. Turning what I woke him up with back on me like that. 

"You haven't even told me why we're going here, except for hands.  Why we have solutions and not a solution?  What you cooking up before you woke me up?"

Where do I even start with this? 

"Well...  I started with how the wounds looked, eventually that took me in two different directions." 

"Hmm?" 

"The first was like how I described them to you, a string of beads or pearls.  I got stuck there for a while, because I couldn't figure out what she would have been trying to say, when there was too much ambiguity with both of those concepts." 

This is where the jump I take is going to either wow Toto or drive him up the wall. 

Ron braced himself.

"Eventually I decided that maybe the color was important in addition to the shape.  That still didn't take me far.  I couldn't come up with any normal pearl that was that color and I couldn't come up with an explanation for why any glass or stone bead in the same color as those wounds would function as an avenue to go down." 

"So..."

"So, I took a short walk downstairs because I am currently banned from going back to crime scenes, and I took at look at the jewelry at the second-hand store for some inspiration.  And surprisingly I got a hit." 

"Hmmm?"

"One of the rings in the case had a conch pearl set in it." 

"A conch pearl?" 

"I know. I wasn't exactly familiar with the concept either.  The pearl on the ring is an almost perfect match for that fleshy pink color in the wounds.  Then I decided to go look up conch pearls and they only come in that pink and then yellows, like the blisters around the wounds." 

"Huh." 

"It just looked so similar that I almost felt there was no way that wasn't what the clue was pointing to. Still... it's such an uncommon choice.  I'm almost sure that I'd never have come up with that realization if I was at a crime scene without an internet connection." 

"We can't discount the amount of information she seems to know about animals." 

"It's just bothering me. What are the odds I'm sitting here with a ring that makes the connection for me?"

"How rare are conch pearls Ron?" 

"Conch are endangered,  It's very rare that a conch produces a pearl, a conch has to be dead to collect a pearl from it." 

"So very rare then."

"Exactly."

There was a pause for a few seconds.  Ron heard a car drive by on Toto's end of the phone.  He was walking back to the forensics lab. 

Does Toto find this unsettling too? 

Does he even think this could be right or does he think I'm stretching for this clue? 

Finally, Toto spoke again, "Hmmm.  So the wound looks like a string of conch pearls.  Where does that take us?" 

Ron sighed. 

"A couple different directions actually."

"Mhm?" 

"So at first, I thought it might have been a clue as to what poison would be used in the next victim, because it comes from a clue directly connected to the poison used to kill the last victim." 

"Do conches have poison?" 

"No." 

"What even is a conch?"

"It's an aquatic snail.  There are some aquatic snails that make venoms." 

"So that could be where it's pointing!"

"Well... it could. But... if it were pointing to that there wouldn't be much useful information to take from that. 

"We don't have the autopsy yet on victim three, but certainly there's some signs that it could be snail venom used on her?" Toto asked.

"No. That's why I think that interpretation of the clue is a dead end." 

"How?" 

"It's not just a few species of snails that produce venom, it's an entire family of them, cone snails, that are venomous.  And they all produce venoms with different effects."

"So basically any symptoms of a venom being used on victim three could suggest the use of a cone snail venom?"

"Yep, that's how much variety there is in the venoms produced by cone snails.  Without forensics we'd never be able to guarantee if that information was true or false."

"Huh. That's a shame."

"I kind of left that clue there, but if we did find something particularly compelling on victim three, maybe we could try to narrow down which species of cone snails produced a venom that would create that effect.  That kind of research could take hours, there are over 900 species of them, and that information once again couldn't be verified without an autopsy being completed." 

"That's not why you're having me go back to look at victim three though, is it?  There's something else you've deduced?" 

"Two possibilities."

"Hmmmm..." 

Ron sat there.  He felt a little empty at the idea of spelling both the remaining deductions out to Toto.  There were aspects of the second one that he wanted to gloss past. 

"So I'm going to the lab to help you pick out information to show which one's right?" 

"Yeah." 

"Do I get to know what they are before I get to the lab?" 

The easier answer to that would be no.  Even though it was guaranteed that nothing Ron told Toto about the two clues would disrupt his ability to analyze the bodies, Ron just didn't like the idea of putting what was bothering him out into the open. He pressed his lips together for a moment before he started talking. 

"I can go through them, I don't think knowing what we're disproving will change how you look at the bodies." 

"Okay." 

"So, after the dead end with the possible cone snail venom.  I went back to the fact that we were looking at a wound that resembled a string of cone snail pearls and tried to figure out if there were any other directions that information could take us." 

"And...?"

"Instead of looking for a species that produced the next poison, I wondered if the clue could be a suggestion of how long it would take to find the next body.  And snails are ... slow." 

Toto started laughing.  

"Ron! That's a connection I could have made!" 

"I know!  And it seems too simple to be something that Alice would intend to hide as a clue.  But there was so much time elapsed between the second and third victim.  I wondered if she was trying to leave a hint that that was happening at the second victim's crime scene." 

"Hmmmm...  We had been wondering about that...  I just took at as her playing games with us. It would be interesting if she'd left a clue that it was going to happen.  We missed it at the crime scene though."  

"We did, but I don't see how that changed the case negatively for us." 

"Fair.  Is that all there is to that one?" 

"Pretty much.  It seems somewhat simple and I had a hard time coming up with how that would change the course of the cases beyond letting us know that we would be stuck waiting, so I don't particularly like that interpretation of the information." 

"But, it does match with what we've seen with the pause in the cases." 

"Yes."

"And the third?"

"This is the one I think we'll be able to test once we get to the forensics lab.  How far out are you?" 

"Just a few minutes." 

"Okay.  I think that the third interpretation of the clue left on the second victim relates to the third victim." 

"So that's why I need to look at her hands?" 

"Precisely." 

"What am I looking for?" 

"Scars, deformities." 

"Do I get to know why?" 

"Well Toto, that'd take all the fun out of it." 

Toto let out a long suffering sigh and then took a stab at what Ron was thinking, "Scars or deformities.  That makes it sound more related to the first victim and his blindness than the second victim.  There's something interesting that you figured out about the second victim while I was asleep, wasn't there?." 

Ron paused for a moment.   Toto's guess was completely off base, but it still surprised him.  The connection he'd made between suspected scars or deformities to the blindness that the first victim had lived with. 

Based off of what I've told him to look for, he's under the impression that all of the victims have physical disabilities of some kind.  That certainly is an interesting way of looking at it.  Completely different than what I'm thinking though.

Ron was certain that if Toto's intuition was just a little bit sharper, he'd actually make a decent detective under the right circumstances.   The fact that his brain had sensed the possibility of a pattern between the two victims spoke to the strides the man had made in his deductive skills since he and Ron had started working together.   Ron let a small smile cross his face before he went to crush Toto's guess. 

"I'm afraid not Toto.  I like where your mind is though." 

Toto sighed again. 

"I think you've shaved your time till you're a competent detective down to 50 years now!" Ron added. 

"Ron, can you save these comments for a time when we're not in the middle of a case?" The tone in Toto's exclamation was a direct threat to end the call. 

Ron cringed.  He felt wrong making that joke, considering he'd just spent half the afternoon recognizing just how dependent he was on Toto and his hard work.   He'd normally think nothing of  a comment like that, but after the chaos of the past week and the way Toto'd been down about his skills of observation, the aftermath of the sentence left Ron feeling a little sick to his stomach. 

"We're at the forensics lab anyway. Give me a few minutes and I'll have the third victim's body ready to be viewed."  

Toto sounded dejected.  Ron felt even worse. 

There was the sound of a keypad beeping somewhere near the phone, an electronic lock clicking, and then a door opening.  The ambient noise from outside: cars, the rustle of leaves in the breeze, and passerby disappeared with the metallic clunk of the door shutting behind Toto.   Ron could hear the faint echoey click of Toto's shoes against the tile floors through the phone.  The uninterrupted sound of the echo spoke to how emptied out the forensics building was after hours.   

Ron sat in silence and let Toto have a break from the things that kept sneaking their way out of his mouth before he had the chance to moderate them. 

He was frustrated, mostly with himself.  It was a feeling that had become all but normal for him since the start of the chimera murder cases. 

Ron considered briefly taking a vow of silence, considered that it might somehow save him from the stupid things he was unable to stop saying around Toto. 

Then he remembered the two months (it was supposed to be four) where he'd been stuck being silent.  

It hadn't done much in the way of keeping him from saying things he'd regretted.  There were still ridiculous, outlandish things that somehow made it past the filter that was the time it took to write those thoughts down and turn the board or notepad around for someone to read.   

In fact, the process had stunted Ron's communication in a completely different way.   That time it took to write was never enough to stop the stupid things that had no emotion or feeling attached to them.  Almost every rude, critical statement that Ron made fell cleanly into that category, they really weren't meant to be rude, per se, it was just that they were too blunt or too sensitive of a topic to make a joke about.  The things that Ron said out loud that were driven by emotion, the soft, kind things he'd say to Toto before he had time to consider their impact, those were the things that had taken a hit when he'd been limited to a pen and paper.  The anxiety about saying something like that never had the time to catch up when it was his mouth saying it.   But when these things were written, there was enough time for Ron to understand the implications and fear them enough to cut the statement off entirely, replace it with some noncommittal or emotionless one word response.  

Through those two months, Toto had often looked puzzled upon realizing that 30 seconds of Ron scribbling could somehow yield only one word at times. When it could result in nearly a page of text to read at other times.  Ron had wondered for a while if Toto had caught onto the fact that his one word responses often fell into the slot that normally would be filled by something softer than the majority of things that Ron said.  Whether Toto had consciously realized the change or not, the difference in Ron's communication took a toll on them.  In the absence of the kinder, more appreciative Ron that slipped out of his mouth when he wasn't running interference on it, Toto had seemed more tired, more unsure of himself, and sometimes frustrated with Ron in a way that Ron hadn't seen since the first few months that they'd known each other.  The feeling that something was off had been gradually sneaking up on him, but Ron had written it off as residual anxiety about their near deaths or his own fear that perhaps Toto had finally realized that Ron was more trouble than he was worth.  

Then one evening, Toto had been over at his apartment while he cooked dinner, talking Ron through a case file that he'd recently pulled out of the cold case stack.  Toto had been leafing through the transcripts of interviews between the possible suspects and the police when he'd blurted out, "All these suspects from her place of work and their interviews and no one bothered to take a statement from the victim's boyfriend?  He's the only one with an unverified alibi and knowledge of her schedule that day."  It was one of those moments of investigative clarity from Toto that Ron truly found moving.  Ron had spent the last few minutes listening to Toto, wondering when he'd get around to catching the fact that an interrogation with the person most likely to be the murderer was absent and the fact that Toto had realized it without prodding was exciting.  The event really should have earned Toto a "That's my partner!" or an "I'd expect nothing less from my partner!"  Ron had almost written that out, stopped himself and cut it down to a simple "Right" before he'd turned the whiteboard around to Toto.   Toto had seemed to deflate upon reading the response and had given Ron a little smile that didn't quite reach his eyes before he went back to flipping through the case files.  Ron had found himself wondering when he'd last called Toto partner and realized that they'd both been on the cruise ship at the time.  It had been that long. 

The next day, he'd allowed himself to blurt out the first nice thing he'd thought about Toto rather than trying and failing to write it down.   It had been completely against what the doctor had told him to do with his damaged voice, he felt like he'd torn something open in his throat doing it, and the cracked, hoarse version of his voice that had come out had been awful and alien sounding.  The way that Toto's eyes had gone all round and clear on hearing the word partner directed at him had been worth it, even with the 40 minute lecture Ron had gotten afterwards about following the doctor's instructions. 

There was the sound of another keypad beeping as numbers were input and the sound of another electronic lock opening with a snap, a metal door creaked as it opened on Toto's side of the phone and then a few seconds later there was a loud metallic clunk.  

He's gone and tossed the phone onto one of the metal tables in there, hasn't he? 

For someone as clumsy as Toto was, Ron had never known him to be intentionally careless with his belongings. The fact that he'd tossed his phone down spoke volumes about the mood Ron had put him in and the exhaustive toll of the investigation. 

Ron heard the squeaking of the wheels of the cart used for transporting bodies and the grating slide of metal on metal, a metal cabinet door slammed and then Toto was back. 

"What is it that we're looking for on the third victim?"

"Scars on the hands, of any kind.  If you'd rather not search for them you can just send me a picture of the fronts and backs of each hand and then I'll check." 

"It's fine. I'll look" 

Toto was quiet for a few minutes. 

"Something's wrong with the fingernail on the right pointer finger." 

"Wrong?" 

"Like part of it is missing... the long way." 

"Send me a picture of it.  The other side of the hand too." 

The shutter of the camera on Toto's phone clicked and then clicked again few moments later." 

Two text messages appeared.   Ron opened them. 

"I'll go ahead and send over photos of the left hand too." 

"Thanks." 

Ron clicked open the first picture, it was the one of the index fingernail.  The nail was a normal length, a sliver of white on the end of the nail, still stained with dirt and bits of skin. The nail bed was a pale bluish color.  Ron imagined it would have looked pinkish when the victim was alive.   Ron could even see most of the whitish "moon" at the base of the nail.  Part of the nail was missing and looked to have been missing for some time, a section of the nail on the side closest to the thumb was just... gone, extending almost a quarter of the way to the other side of the nail.  The missing section ran the full length of the nail, unbroken skin filled the area that should have been occupied by the missing quarter of the nail, there was dirt from the park still smudged into the skin fold along the side of the nail and around the base of the nail. 

"I'll assume they've cleaned her hands up a bit since you last saw them at the crime scene?" 

"Yeah." 

The missing section of the nail was just narrow enough that Ron could understand how it would have been missed at the crime scene, considering the dirt, blood, and pieces of broken skin that would have been drawing Toto's attention.  

Ron looked at the other photo: the palm side of the hand showing the pad of the finger. 

The skin on the pointer finger looked a little thicker than the others.  There was a puckered irregular width whitish scar that ran the length of the pad of the index finger almost all the way to the first knuckle, it corresponded with the missing section of the fingernail.  There were several pinprick brownish scars to the pad of the index finger as well. 

"You've found it Toto!" 

"Explain to me what I've found?" 

"Proof that she killed the second victim!"

"What?!"

"Okay, maybe not definitive proof, but this supports my third theory, down to what her involvement in the second murder probably was." 

"Wait.  What was the third theory?" 

"So... with the first and second theory, I ran with the idea that the wound clue led to snails.  The third, I dropped that idea and tried to come up with something else that the wounds looked like.  And I decided that if the wounds weren't supposed to look like a string of pearls or beads, then they probably represented a chain."

"A chain, like the chain of murders"

"Exactly." 

"At the time we would have received this clue, we already would have known that there was more than one victim, but we didn't have a third victim and clearly Alice was about to pause the cases after the second.   So my interpretation of the chain clue was two part: one, this is a chain of murders, thus there will be more than two. We were being warned not to believe that we solved it because the cases paused for a few days. Two: this is a chain of murders in that every single victim is the perpetrator of the prior murder.  We already had indication that victim 2 was involved in victim 1's murder, so this wasn't that great of a leap to make." 

"That's still the hardest part of this for me to wrap my head around considering they're all on the run from Alice, but if the evidence shows it, the evidence shows it." 

Ron sighed.  "That's about where I'm at on that part of the issue too, Toto.  If I could figure out how any of this made sense to the perpetrators, we'd be well on our way to stopping the fourth murder." 

"So what exactly about the scars on her fingers tells you that the theory is correct." 

"It's the type and placement of the scars." 

Ron clicked open the last two images from Toto: pictures of the front and back of the left hand.  There was thickened skin to the left pointer finger and thumb pads, but no significant scarring to any of the fingers on the hand. 

....and this final portion of the information is still consistent with my theory. 

"The issue with her fingernail is because of an old injury to the nail bed, the part of the finger that grows the fingernail.  At some point in the past she had a penetrating injury that ran the full thickness of the fingertip, down from the tip of the finger to the nail bed.  That's why the scar on the pad of her right index finger matches the location of the missing nail so well, both came from the same injury.  That kind of injury would scar that section of the nail bed so badly that she'd never grow nail in that area again, which is why the rest of the nail looks completely normal." 

"Hmmm"

"Take a close look at the pads of the other fingers on the right hand... any injuries?"

"Nothing" 

"Right" 

"There's just those small brown scars to the index finger too" Toto added.

"That and the thickened skin on that finger.  She did something long term that left that finger and only that finger open to injury and exposed to small injuries that caused the skin to thicken" 

"Like?"

"Sewing.  That big injury up to the nail bed was probably an accident involving a sewing machine.  The smaller pinpoint scars and thickened skin are more likely from accidents involving pins and hand sewing needles." 

Toto sucked in a breath in a hiss.

"You ever had an injury like that with your projects?"

"Little needle and pin sticks, but nothing like the bad one, I've never wanted to go through the trouble of learning how to use a sewing machine." 

"Looking at this that seems reasonable... Wait!  You're telling me you sewed both sets of those futon-pattern pajamas by hand?" Toto suddenly sounded appalled. 

"Yep!" 

"Is he insane?  I mean he'd always been a little over the top with these kinds of projects.  I'd always assumed those weird pajamas had been something taken up on a whim, not the product of hours and hours of work.  Hours of work, for a joke, a gag?" was Toto's under-the-breath-doesn't-know-he's-saying-it reply. 

Ron almost laughed, but had the presence of mind not to alert Toto to the fact that that tirade had been verbal. 

"What about the left hand?"

"Hmm?" 

"She's got thick skin on the left thumb and pointer.  How's that make sense if she's got that from sewing?"

"Sewing's a two handed job, Toto.   The needle would pass through the fabric between the left and right hand so she'd get needlestick injuries on both index fingers and would be putting pressure on the thumb because she was probably using the pad of the thumb to push the needle through the fabric." 

"Huh...  So she sews, apparently a lot.  You think she put the venom film into the shirt the second victim was wearing..." 

"Exactly." 

"How would Alice know if she had the skill set for something like that?  Especially if she'd been on the run?" 

"I think she may have worked as a seamstress for the M family when she was in thier employ.  In their line of work, having clothing with no branding and no identifiable source can be useful for many reasons.  Knowledge of what job position the woman used to work in the organization would be something Alice could know." 

"Is that why you asked about the clothing from the first victim?  To see if it was factory made?"

"Exactly."

"I'll go look and see"

"Check all the clothes, hers and the first victim's.  We're already sure of the source of the second victim's clothing considering its standard issue among the crime scene crew."

Chapter Text

Toto had managed to track down the belongings bags of the three victims in the crime lab. It had taken more time than Ron had anticipated, but without the staff at the lab, it should have been no surprise that Toto would be on his own in trying to find them. Eventually all the belongings had been taken out and laid out on the metal tables in the lab. Ron got a veritable treasure trove of photos of the various articles of clothing, with details in focus down to the stitching on the seams and photos of every location a tag might have reasonably been found on each piece (whether or not there were tags present on the items to be photographed). It might have been inconsequential, but something about Toto understanding and anticipating exactly what he was going to ask to look at just from "check all the clothes" had him feeling a little giddy.

After the steady stream of photos of the clothing stopped coming in, photos of the previously withheld lab results and additional images that Toto had taken earlier in the day of the two victims that had completed forensics started coming in next. After that had been close up details of the third victim, who was still laid out on the metal table. Small details: eyes, hair color and texture, the teeth, the injection site, the two miniscule birthmarks that Toto had found to the lower outer part of the left calf and the indented vaccination scar on the outer right thigh.

Ron had simply sat and stared at his phone as the photos came in, the stream of new information moving too quickly for him to even try to verbalize everything he was noticing to Toto. Ron wasn't entirely sure he needed to speak to Toto for this though. The three years of cases that they'd worked together had clearly given Toto an understanding of what in a crime scene drew Ron's eyes, Toto hadn't neglected as single detail. The best way Ron could think to describe Toto's process in sending him information and photos was meticulous. He was a little in awe of it, he didn't recall seeing Toto work like this at any point in the past. In the few gaps he had between thoughts about the information about the cases, he was left wondering what about this situation was causing Toto to function so well.

Toto was largely quiet as well. Ron heard the shutter of Toto's camera click occasionally as he collected images, a few quiet, quiet whispered thoughts that Toto probably assumed he was keeping to himself, the sounds of Toto opening bags, picking up and putting down objects, and shifting the victim's body around on the table for the various angles he needed to capture the images of the details.

Before, Ron had assumed that any work he did processing the information that Toto was given from forensics would be more akin to torture than the normal fun he had while at crime scenes. For some reason, the current moment felt relaxing, and while he did miss getting to be present, he was almost enjoying getting to work with Toto like this.

The rate at which the camera shutter clicked began to slow, the gaps between the clusters of new photos arriving on Ron's phone grew, and Toto's side of the phone became more quiet.

Ron began to try and draw broader conclusions from all the information he'd sifted through.

Little on the third victim's body had been surprising, the details were sent more for the purpose of showing the absence of identifying information than for the purpose of providing information that could reasonably be qualified as "outliers".

The clothes had been the only true piece of new information and even those had turned up little in terms of valuable findings. The first victim's clothing had tags, most for brands local to Japan. The third's clothing appeared to be exclusively handmade.

Ron tried to reason through these findings.

Why though?

She makes the clothing.

It makes sense for her to be wearing it.

But for the second victim to have modified clothing as well.

And the first to be completely dressed in factory made clothing.

I'd assumed the M family would use the untraceable clothing to keep the origins of the bodies from being identified.

Of course, that would imply that the person who dressed the individuals expected to leave the clothing behind at the crime scenes, meaning they would have anticipated the victim's deaths.

Yet one of them is dressed completely in factory made clothes.

And the maker of the untraceable clothing finds herself dead, entirely dressed in an outfit of the bespoke clothing.

She fled here to escape the family, she didn't have a death wish. If that were the case, there were more convenient ways to go about dying. She made those clothes and clearly dressed herself, but the intention was not to make her body untraceable. Her motivation for wearing the clothes would not have been to obscure her origins should she be found dead. If anything, it would have been in her best interest to dress in something traceable just in case she was killed.

Did any of these individuals consider their deaths to be anything other than a distant possibility?

From the looks of it, victim 1 certainly didn't, dressed as he was. The clothing isn't valuable to us as it's all from Japan and betrays nothing of where he was before coming here. But, the situation looks more like he abandoned his former wardrobe upon arriving in the country in an attempt to blend in.

Victim 2 dressed willingly in an outfit from an unknown source. He had been given a task to complete, about that much we are certain, given the photos from the first crime scene. He didn't expect to die either, certainly not as a result of the clothing that he'd put on that day.

The third victim appears to have dressed in her bespoke clothing more out of convenience than anything else. If she fled here, she'd want to avoid clothing that would betray her origin as somewhere other than here. The clothing she was wearing would have checked that box, so there would have been no need to collect a new set of outfits the way the first victim did.

If they fled here then they all would have thought they were being hunted.

If that were the case...

They should have been on high alert.

Why would they follow instructions from an unknown source?

Victim 1 likely placed an unknown object under a bench at the park.

Victim 2 collected that object and a murder weapon, after donning a deadly set of crime scene gear.

Victim 3 created the deadly crime scene uniform.

They couldn't have been in contact with each other. It's not possible in the context of the actions each of them completed.

Only the actions of victim 1 could be interpreted as consistent with the behavior of someone who was working in conjunction with a group. The act of planting an object was completed with the expectation that someone would be coming to pick that object up.

We still have no clue what the object was, so there is no way to know what the motivation was.

Ron sighed.

There was the scraping sound of Toto sliding the third victim's body back into the locker it was being kept in.

"Do we really need to get out victims one and two?" he sounded tired.

"We can put a hold on it for the moment. We probably need to talk through what we know right now."

"Okay I'm getting out of here to do that. It's freezing."

The door opened and thunked shut. Ron heard Toto's footsteps for a few moments. They stopped and then Toto came to rest with a slow exhale. Ron could almost imagine him slumped, either against a wall or on the bottom few steps of a set of stairs. Resting places that only someone who refused to stop pushing themselves would be desperate enough to make use of.

"There's just too many details", Toto complained. The statement lacked the normal anxious energy that crime scenes inspired in Toto. It was the tired observation of a soul that had long since absorbed the complexity of the situation and only had exhaustion left to offer as a reaction.

"Toto have you eaten today?"

Toto sighed in reply.

Ron wanted to bury his face in his hands. Toto could get so single-minded during cases. It worried him, that somehow Toto had managed to go goodness knows how long without eating a meal when work got busy.

He'd been rushing this morning too...

He called so early I'm almost certain he woke up to the phone call asking him to go to the new crime scene. He didn't have breakfast. There's no way he had time for it.

Ron remembered why he'd gotten so persistent about Kamonohashi Sweets. Why it was that he'd gone so far as to enlist Amamiya, while at a crime scene no less, as a customer to ensure that he wouldn't be blocked from sneaking snacks into the Metropolitan Police Department. Why he'd gotten so skillful at harassing Toto for cold cases at the end of the workday whenever there wasn't an open case. It was a little easier to force a someone to accept help if he didn't realize you were helping him. It was a little more likely that Toto would actually snack on something if the sweets were already there in front of him at his desk. Ron wasn't entirely sure Toto had caught on to the fact that it'd been upwards of a year since he'd gone to Ron's apartment without having at least one meal over the course of his visit. There certainly was a trick to it: making sure Toto was in the middle of discussing something that took his full attention before setting a plate in front of him, asking what he wanted to drink rather than if he wanted something to drink, disguising the sweets deliveries as desperate attempts to rob the Metropolitan police department of their precious cold cases rather than admitting that he really was just there to make sure Toto remembered to eat something that day.

Ron was currently stripped of his ability to make use of any of the clever methods he'd come up with to trick Toto into eating when he was too focused on work to remember to do it. He was forced to resort to the methods that normal people used. He hated it.

"Okay. There's no reason we can't talk through what we know over a meal."

"Ron, seriously-"

Oh that's stubborn Toto gearing up to dig his heels in on this.

Distract, distract, distract.

"Is the alliance surveillance particularly bad today?"

"Huh?"

"Is that why you don't want to go get something to eat?"

"Ron, I'm just tired. The alliance agents aren't doing anything different than they have been the past few days. They're still annoying. I'm not really concerned by the fact that they're following me at this point.  It's not like I'm going to accidentally lead them to the safehouse. It seems like half the time they lose track of me even when I'm not trying to shake them off"

"Okay, good." Ron felt a bit of tension that he didn't know he was holding leave upon hearing the statement. He'd been so focused on Alice potentially targeting Toto that he'd pushed the fact that Toto was already being followed to the back of his mind. Clearly, that hadn't kept the information from weighing on him.

"We're going to wind up talking through the information regardless and it's going to take time. You can talk through it from the comfort of a restaurant booth or you can sit there on the steps until the tile floor makes your back start hurting."

"There's no way you have cameras on me in here. What the fuck Ron?" Toto's voice was almost whisper-quiet, a mix of exhaustion and surprise. There was a breathed out little half laugh from Toto trailing after it.

"No cameras, just seemed like what you'd be doing at the moment."

"It's uncanny." and then Toto's thinking voice, "For all the time I spend with you, this kind of stuff shouldn't surprise me anymore."

"Well, how about I be uncanny while you go eat dinner. At least get up from those stairs. Don't whine to me about your back pain later,  I'm trying to get you out of the situation that will cause it."

"Fine." Toto conceded. He let out a huff as he got up from where he sat.

"Take the break while you can get it, Toto. Once we sort out what we know, we're going to have to tell the students what we figured out. There's nothing to do about the tiredness but do you really want to deal with that on an empty stomach with no coffee?"

That dragged a true laugh out of Toto.

"Come on, out! The other two will still be here to look at when you get back."

There had been a mausoleum-cold kind of quiet that had settled into the background of the call after Toto had entered the empty crime lab building, as if somehow it were possible for one to hear still air through the line of a phone call. Ron hadn't realized how unsettling it was until he noticed its absence as Toto clacked open the door to exit the building. The outdoor noises came rushing back though the phone: breeze, the occasional car, cicadas.

Cicadas? was it really that late? already?

Toto was quiet on his walk to wherever it was that he planned on eating. Ron let him have the moment to rest. He wasn't sure what Toto had needed to do in the office today in addition to the work he'd done on the case, but peace seemed like something he could do with at the moment. If Ron closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that he was headed to dinner too. Warm breeze on his face, the concrete scraping under his sandals with every step, Toto's shoulder occasionally bumping into his arm as they walked. Ron wondered how it felt outside at the moment. He didn't want to risk opening the windows of the second-hand store, it might be too conspicuous, but if this were a night that he were back at his apartment he would have opened up the door to the balcony to let the air in.

There'd been a certain amount of danger in sitting in the quiet since Toto had told him he wouldn't be stopping by anymore.

His brain had a tendency to wander paths he didn't want it taking if he let its leash too loose. A few days ago, Ron had realized it became even more of a problem after a dose of the tranquilizers. The fuzzy feeling in his limbs and the fog that lingered on the edges of his mind made keeping a hold on that leash particularly difficult. He'd left his flank open the moment he'd started imagining himself strolling to dinner with Toto.

Ron's mind had been set adrift and he would be mercy to it.

Five days of filling time. Five days of twisting his brain in knots unsuccessfully trying to solve cases. Five days of wishing for things he couldn't have.

The time had stretched.

and stretched

and stretched.

There was a pit in Ron's stomach. The desolate feeling he got thinking about how much he'd been left wanting for was becoming all-consuming.

He knew that talking, making Toto do something to fill the empty air around him would be enough.

Enough for him to throw a rug over the pit full of things he'd been left wanting over the past few days.

But Toto needed quiet.

Something else needed to fill the gap.

Ron reached for a pouch of brown sugar syrup with shaky fingers. He twisted. The lid gave him trouble. It wasn't budging.

That yawning awful feeling. That he'd be here forever.

That Toto would only ever be found on the other side of a phone.

Ron's hands started to shake. He twisted at the cap harder. For some reason he couldn't get a grip.

He was a smoker shielding his cigarette from the wind trying to get a flame to catch, an alcoholic that had been kicked out at closing time, a user trying to pick up a spilled bottle of pills from where it was scattered on the floor.

Most people noticed his penchant for brown sugar syrup and considered it simply a strange aspect of his personality.

There was ample evidence to support this. Ron's habit of mixing it into recipes in a way that actually enhanced them. Ron being familiar enough with the various notes that could be found in brown sugar that he could often identify the source of a particular packet of the stuff down to the farm the sugar cane had been produced at. On the surface, Ron had all the true markings of a connoisseur.

Somehow Toto had been perceptive enough to notice that there was more to it than that.

How the rate at which packets disappeared during particularly difficult cases was markedly higher than normal times.

How Ron truly never was more than an arms reach from a packet, even when they traveled.

How it was the one thing that Ron didn't go without for any length of time.

For all Toto complained, there hadn't been any point that he'd made it so that Ron wasn't able to get at his brown sugar.

Ron wasn't sure if it was possible to go into withdrawals from sugar. It didn't seem to be something that could happen.

Regardless, it was something that Toto seemed unwilling to test on him.

He was still twisting at the cap, the ridges leaving little red lines on his fingers from the force he was pressing at them with.

Ron gave up, pulled at a corner of the pouch with his teeth, and ripped a hole in it.

About fifteen seconds later, with a mouthful of brown sugar, Ron wondered if maybe it was a good thing that Toto wasn't here to witness this.

Gnawing open a particularly stubborn packet of kuromitsu seemed like something that Toto wouldn't have let him live down.

Toto's end of the call had changed. At some point in Ron's struggle to open the packet of brown sugar, Toto had arrived at the restaurant. There was a lot of background noise, overlapping conversations and the clinking of plates and glasses.

Somewhere small then. But still busy.

The sound of Toto's voice and that of the person greeting him much quieter than the sounds of pans and cooking utensils.

Toto's got himself a seat right next to the kitchen.

Smart.

Sounds crowded, but that just means additional background noise to cover the conversation, additional orders to keep the kitchen staff too busy to eavesdrop.

Ron sat and listened, absentmindedly sipping at his torn pouch of brown sugar.

He hadn't bothered to switch on the lights when he'd come up from downstairs earlier. The loft was lit only by the glow coming up from the staircase and the cool, weak light that filtered in the half-open blinds from the street lights outside. The room quiet. His body was there in the second hand store, but his mind wasn't. The whole world, as Toto experienced it, distilled into the grainy audio that came through the phone created a second layer.  He'd become practiced enough over the past few days of phone sleuthing that he could build himself a mental map of wherever it was that Toto took the phone.

Ron sat somewhere between the two places as his mind wandered, the light and noise and activity of the restaurant superimposed over the quiet of the dim second hand store.

The information he got from Toto's call was building an environment around him to the point that if he leaned too far into the call he almost felt like Toto was sat in front of him. Ron's footprint in Toto's world was the limited space the phone took up on the corner of the table.

Something about that information made Ron feel insignificant. Almost like he wasn't real.

He squeezed his eyes shut against that. The thought made his head hurt.

He tipped forward into the visual that his mind created with the sound from the phone call. Hazarded a guess as to what the chef was cooking, the number of staff working in the kitchen, how many people were sitting around Toto and what they'd ordered. It didn't matter that none of those things were something he could know from what he heard. He just needed to imagine it well enough that the cozy bright space his mind had created from Toto's phone call would lose its ghost-like transparency. Imagine it well enough that he wouldn't be able to see the empty loft in front of him when he opened his eyes.

Toto on the other side of the table, half slouched, head propped on one arm. A steaming cup of tea in front of him. The grey blazer crumpled in his lap. That zoned-out look to him that he had at the end of long days. Quiet, contemplative. Looking down. An outsider would think he was reading the menu. Ron had been privy to that look enough times that he knew Toto's eyes weren't scanning anything. Wherever it was that they were looking was somewhere far beyond the plane that the restaurant sat on.

Ron didn't enjoy seeing Toto tired, but he still felt lucky that he got to see him at moments like this. He'd seen the switch dozens of times before, between exhausted Toto and exhausted Toto when he was working. Work Toto looked unsettlingly normal, somewhat anxious, always sat up straight and put his full energy into things with no regard to how tired he was. There was a reason that people doubted Toto's deductive abilities but not his willingness to continue trying, to put in the work. Toto was a expert at wearing a brave face, of hiding discomfort, fatigue under a near impenetrable facade. Seeing Toto slouched, seeing him actually look exhausted rather than just getting the feeling that the man was tired was something private that Ron felt special getting to see.

He looked at the rest of the restaurant. They were at a booth with one side bordering a counter at the edge of the open kitchen. The cook was at the stove on the opposite end of the kitchen, facing away. The table behind Toto held a group of three salarymen working their way through a couple carafes of sake while they ate, ties loosened, blazers off, rosiness in their cheeks. They talked loudly.

The server appeared at the side of the table. Ron hadn't noticed him until he started speaking, his approach overshadowed by the colorful conversation from the inebriated salarymen. Toto snapped back into awareness at being addressed, quickly gave his order. Ron sipped at his brown sugar syrup, uninterested in food, shook his head at the server when he looked his way.

Toto picked up his menu, propped it up in its holder at the edge of the table, its laminated edges snapping as they made contact with the surface of the table.

The restaurant was loud, conversation around them boisterous, the lights were bright and the smoke and steam from the kitchen made the air feel thick. Despite all of these things, the moment felt fragile, almost frozen. Ron's whole world condensed down to the contents of one booth at a small, busy restaurant on a weeknight.  Everything outside of this moment may as well have been covered in a dark fog.  The cases seemed impossible to solve. The fourth victim could be somewhere out there right now, body waiting to be called in. It was almost certain that there was at least one tail from the alliance on the street outside the restaurant. Their odds of coming out the other side of this alive were horrible and getting worse by the day.  There was no telling what Alice would have ready for the two of them tomorrow or the day after that. But none of that mattered.

Not right now.

Toto in front of him, sipping at his tea. The top button of his shirt opened. A comfortable silence between them.

The cook clanking a pan down on the counter near their booth. Plating tonkotsu, piling shredded cabbage, pouring sauce into a dish. Loading rice into a bowl then closing the rice cooker with a loud clunk.

Toto appeared to be dragged back into the present as his meal was set in front of him. A short whispered blessing and then he picked up his chopsticks to eat.

Ron took a pull of his brown sugar and came up with nothing. The packet was empty. He crumpled it and set it to the side, reached for another without thinking and twisted the cap off before taking a gulp.

Toto didn't react.

Toto didn't react.

The golden light of the restaurant faded. The clanking of pans and cups took on that grainy quality again. The image of Toto that Ron had so carefully conjured disappeared. Ron found himself staring at the slats of the blinds on the other side of the darkened loft. He felt cold. The syrup on his tongue no longer comforting, but cloying. It made his mouth feel dry.

His delicately curated illusion had fallen apart.

Toto couldn't see him.

Toto would have never watched him finish a packet of sugar just to immediately pick up another without saying something.

That detail had been enough to set the whole thing crumbling.

He had been reduced to a cellphone at the corner of Toto's table.

That emptied-out feeling was back and the sugar didn't do anything to help it this time.

By the time the clanking and conversation from the restaurant faded from the call, three more emptied packets of brown sugar had joined the crumpled packet on the top of the coffee table.

Toto had been quiet while eating, seemingly lost in thought.

Ron found himself too unsettled by the feeling that something was absent to be the one to initiate conversation about the case. He was currently directing his frustrations at an ill-advised fifth packet of brown sugar. He felt almost like he was going to shake out of his skin with the sugar already running its way through his veins.

He'd given an honest effort to sorting through what information they knew for sure, what information he still had questions about, what they didn't know. But with the disconnected feeling he'd had, his work hadn't been very effective. He was going to have to talk it through with Toto, just as soon as he could keep a packet of brown sugar out of his mouth long enough to get a full sentence out.

Cicadas whined. Toto interrupted them, "Back to the lab for the last two?" 

"Mhm" 

"Alright."

Toto didn't seem to sound as tired, more calm than anxious exhaustion at this point. 

"I know we were supposed to talk over the case while I ate, but I guess I didn't realize how hungry I was and I forgot to bring it up." 

Ron mustered the willpower to stop drinking through his dwindling supply of brown sugar. 

"It's no problem,  I don't think there's too much new stuff we need to go through before we can call the students and get their take on it." 

"You talked to them today?" 

"Mhm. Walked through this morning's crime scene with them.  Told them to behave after they got done looking around." 

"Behave?" 

Fuck. 

Ron didn't want to answer the question.

"... they might have had a little more fun than strictly necessary last night after you sent them back to their hotel.  I told them we weren't okay with a repeat of that." 

There was a string of something blurted out by Toto.   It was muffled, almost as if Toto had gone and pressed a finger over one of the phone speakers to partially mute himself.  Whatever was said sounded deeply exasperated. 

"I'm assuming you explicitly told them to go straight back to the hotel last night." 

"Yes, well... after they ate dinner...  I didn't think they'd ..." 

"Knowing them they probably went and had their fun and then had dinner, a Blue student loves a good loophole." 

There was another grumble from Toto.  Ron was fairly certain that it would have been a loud angry exclamation of some kind if he wasn't currently walking outside.  Toto's respect for law and common courtesy wouldn't let him have the tantrum he wanted to have in public. 

"I knew I should have put you in charge of making the rules for them. As well versed as you are in being a former Blue student and a full time problem child."  

Ron couldn't help the laugh that tore its way out of his mouth at that. It was clear Toto was in an absolute snit over the student's indiscretions and his own failure to prevent them. It was also clear that that sentence had been an honest attempt to lash out at Ron over it.  Unfortunately, it was funny enough to Ron that it wasn't having the intended effect. 

"So I'm a former Blue Student, but still a full-time problem child?" Ron teased.  

"To this day." answered Toto.  Some of the fight had leaked out of his voice. "I need a fucking coffee." he added. 

Ron had to hold his breath for a second to keep another laugh from slipping out of his mouth. He was relieved. He'd spent a significant portion of his afternoon trying to figure out how he was going to break the news to Toto that the students had gone and gotten up to no good the night before.  In none of the scenarios he'd walked through had Toto been happy about the news, so that aspect of the reaction was no surprise.  However, there hadn't been a single option he'd come up with that had been this entertaining. Ron felt like this was a best case scenario, he'd much prefer Toto lashing out over this than blaming himself. 

"Tell me you've come up with some way of keeping track of them today." The demand was less a request for a status update and more desperation.  Toto had jumped from anger about the situation into concern at an alarming speed.

That sound in Toto's voice had Ron's stomach twisted in knots. 

It's fear. 

Toto's scared. 

Not worried, not anxious. Toto sounded out of his depth.  The way that Ron had felt when Toto had told him that the students had arrived in Japan to help with the case mirrored in Toto's voice. 

They're kids.

He's just realized that they're kids. 

Ron knew it was easy to gloss over that simple fact when working with the students, as intelligent and talented as they were.  The students' insistence that they weren't kids didn't help with it either.  Toto wasn't clueless. He knew, on paper, that the students were still children, this wasn't a matter of something that he'd forgotten.  What Toto had remembered upon hearing about the students utilizing a loophole so they could spend a night out was what it was like to be 17. Being cocky, convinced that you had it all figured out, that consequences couldn't catch up if you ran fast enough. That was the difficult part about wrangling kids like the group from Blue, reconciling the polished image that the students had with the utter cluelessness that they'd insist they had already grown past.

They're kids and they're here getting involved in problems that they don't understand the consequences of.

Toto's just now realizing what he's signed himself up for...  what he signed the kids up for...  oh dear...

"Ron?" Toto didn't sound any less scared. 

"Don't worry. Spitz has been tracking their locations since this morning.  I had them send check in texts until they headed back to the hotel.   The last one I got was..." 

Ron paused and pulled up his messages.  He'd lost track of the students sometime around when he'd started playing around in the table case of accessories.

He was rushing and skimmed past the text of the messages to just the time stamps. 

Alyssa - Sent 3:13 pm. 

"three this afternoon.  So they've been back at the hotel since then." 

He closed the message from Alyssa and moved over to his messages from Toto, to the evidence from the crime lab. 

Wait.

"Okay, correction, I told them they needed to be in the general area of their hotel once they left the neighborhood the crime scene was in.  So they might not be at the hotel. But I think they know better than to try something like they did last night again." 

"Okay, okay, alright." Toto sounded like he was trying to calm himself down. 

"Look, if they have gone out for a little too much fun again tonight, we know we're going to be calling them in a few minutes to chat about the case.  They don't know that.  If we call them and they're somewhere they don't need to be... We'll know we need to do something different to keep them out of trouble." 

"Right." Toto still sounded distracted, a sure sign that the issue was pressing heavily at his mind. 

"If you want to, we can even call them down to the crime lab if they're not where they're supposed to be.  If you think that wandering is going to be too big of a problem, we can get them to stay at my apartments instead of the hotel.  I have those two empty units, Toto, it'd be nothing to get them set up for the students to stay there.   There's ways for us to keep track of them if this worries you too much." 

Toto let out a slow breath. 

Ron felt queasy. 

Something had failed to register when he and Toto had argued about letting the students join the case. Toto shouldn't have been blind to what the risks were, Ron shouldn't have been unaware of Toto's blind spot.   Ron found himself terrified by the breakdown of communication. 

I knew he was missing things from me.

What else from Toto am I missing? What else don't I know.

Ron felt like he needed to hold his breath waiting for a reply from Toto.  

Finally, "Right." The Toto that answered this time sounded as if he was back from wherever his mental field trip had taken him. 

"We'll sort it out when we call the students." Ron didn't know who he was trying to comfort anymore. 

He picked up the fifth packet of brown sugar again.  It was already empty. 

Damn. 

He grabbed the box of syringes and vials off the table. 

"Oh. We'll be doing more than sorting it out." Toto's tone didn't bode well for the students. 

That switch to cold anger dissolved some of the fear that had started clouding Ron's mind.  Whatever was wrong Toto was already making a plan to address.

Ron chuckled as he got up from the couch. 

"What exactly did they do?" Toto's voice was sharp.

"I thought you wouldn't want to know." He was at the counter in the kitchenette unwrapping a large syringe. 

"Oh no, I want to know." Toto sounded dismissive, uninterested.  Ron knew from experience that it could not be further from the truth.  

Oh the students are in trouble.

Ron didn't envy them. Toto normally saved this attitude for murderers, ones that had committed particularly heinous crimes. Ron had rarely found himself at the business end of this one of Toto's moods. 

"They went to an arcade." 

"An arcade? They don't have those in England?" 

Ron's shoulders shook with silent laughter.  Toto was absolutely deadly at the moment.  It was, for lack of a better word...

Adorable.  

He'd sooner choke than admit it. Toto was on a hair trigger and such an admission would take the heat entirely off the students and put it on him. 

He tore open an alcohol pad on instinct and then remembered he really didn't need it. Ron set it down on the counter. 

"They don't have arcades in England, Ron?" Toto was impatient.

 The repeated question only served to make Ron laugh harder, it was becoming more difficult to keep his laughter inaudible.  He was supposed to be serious about this, it was an interrogation after all...  He was forced to drop the syringe he was holding to slam a hand down on the counter in a desperate attempt to get the laughter out of his system. 

Ron cleared his throat. 

"Ah... they do. Um.. I think they were more interested in the claw machines, those aren't as common in England.  I recall being told about a particular limited edition Chocokat plushie this morning."  Ron was grasping at the fraying strands of his willpower to keep himself from laughing again. 

"Plushies..."  Toto was deadpan. 

"I hear they have quite the collection now." Ron said, voice light but purposely devoid of emotion. 

He got back on task. Popped the needle into the first of the remaining vials and inverted it.  Drew up the full amount inside. 

"Plushies..." Repeated Toto. 

Ron set the filled syringe to the side uncapped and popped open the paper and plastic around a second syringe and needle. 

"You missed it this morning.  There's a pretty serious argument ongoing about who's going to get custody of which plushies."

"Hmmm?" 

"Marsh is the only one that's any good at winning them and apparently Hutter and Alyssa feel they should be able to keep their favorites because they had to help Marsh carry them back to the hotel."

Ron snapped the plastic cap off a second vial and emptied it into the second syringe. It joined the first on the counter. 

"I hope they haven't gotten too attached." 

Ron paused, the cap of a third vial half tensioned to snap off against his thumb. 

... huh? 

Oh...

He pushed a little harder on the side of the cap and it flew off the vial. 

"Those plushies are good as gone, aren't they." 

"Mhm." Toto sounded like there would be no talking him out of the idea and no weaseling out of the consequences for the students.  

"They were going to have a time of it getting them onto a flight anyway.  They're not going to be happy about this though..." 

"I'm putting them in a box and they can have them back when they're home again.  They don't get to have it both ways. Either they're going to be kids and play with their plushies and run loose or they're going to act like adults and work on this case." It was "Professor Isshiki" speaking at the moment, not Toto. The same one that had dragged Ron back to Blue's campus before their flight home to chew out the students for texting in class. "They were already damn lucky we didn't send them home the day they got here, this kind of behavior is unbelievable." 

Ron felt gratified that Toto was understanding the situation from his point of view.  He'd been frustrated with Toto the day he'd argued against having the students help with the serial murders case. He'd been confused as to why Toto was under the impression that bringing the students onto the case could be anything but catastrophic.  He understood now, without Toto even saying it, what exactly had been the hang up, the spot that Toto had failed to understand his insistence on sending the students home.  Toto had seen the students at their best (perhaps not best behaved, but their most professional) at school.  He'd only ever seen the students at Blue in their uniforms, in class, and on that tragic Saturday evening when Alice had made her appearance.  Toto lacked data on what the students were like when they weren't being held under the constraints of Blue's extensive rulebook. 

(note: Except in the case of a particularly lazy school administration or a particularly well-behaved bunch of students, the length of a school's rule handbook and the level of detail of the rules therein can be calculated as a function of both the amount of time that the school's students are confined to the school grounds and the creativity of the students at the school. For any school that is meant to contain talented or gifted children, the school's handbook will be extensive and nearly every line inside of the book can be directly correlated with an event put into motion by a current or former student of the institution.  

Additionally, boarding schools have the misfortune of needing to manage student behavior both during school hours and during rest hours. As a result, the kinds of schemes and plots that students may get tied up in become infinitely more complex and troublesome. Intelligent students also tend to bring a certain amount of creativity to their troublemaking beyond that of your typical student body and have a talent for identifying loopholes in existing rules. This allows them to create new problems that cannot be treated with existing consequences according to the letter of the law.  This, of course, necessitates the addition of new rules to the handbook on a very regular basis.  

Blue was no stranger to this phenomenon. Ron had borrowed a copy of the most current handbook from Spitz a few days prior to his arrival at Blue for his diploma, primarily for the purposes of finding out whether there'd been any changes to the graduation regalia and whether there was a possibility that the handbook had outlawed the addition of personal art to the regalia (he'd been considering the idea of embroidering a small platypus onto his mortarboard in black thread).  (There'd been no changes to the regalia in the time between Ron's tenure as a student and present and the rulebook had outlawed any edits to the regalia made by students (a shame)). He'd been amazed when the copy he'd received from Spitz had been 132 pages long. The copy of the handbook that had been circulating during Ron's final semester at Blue had been exactly 76.5 pages long.  Once he'd checked that the font, spacing, and layout of the two versions of the handbook were the same, Ron had been left reeling.  The students of Blue had been pushing the boundaries of what was possible in the eight years it had been since he'd called the institution home.  Ron was left feeling impressed and, frankly, outplayed. There was mischeif afoot at Blue seemingly far beyond his own capabilities. Clearly he needed to step up his game as a soon-to-be alumnus of the institution.  Once Principal Emme had extended her offer to have him as a lecturer, Ron had been incredibly grateful that he'd had the forethought to get a copy of the handbook. He'd been given his warning in the form of the newly added 55.5 pages of handbook and knew better than to take on the challenges that a student body capable of generating such a change in the handbook promised. He'd immediately pushed the responsibility onto Toto and called dibbs on being a teacher's assistant, well aware that Toto was better eqipped to deal with the chaos and ensuring that he'd be treated to a front row seat of the new entertainment.  

Toto, wonderful, genuine Toto who had never done a day of mischief in his life, had been impressed upon reading the handbook the day before his first lecture.  As always, he was willing to step into whatever role was asked of him and also as always, he was willing to do the legwork needed to make sure he filled his role to the best of his ability, thus the last minute handbook reading.  Toto had been wonderfully misguided however, marveling at Blue's administration's ability to foresee such a range of circumstances that might come up, failing to realize that every single one of the circumstances within the handbook had already come about at least once in the school's history.  Ron, fearing that correcting the incorrect assumption might scare Toto out of taking on the lecturer position, had simply smiled at Toto when he'd given rave reviews on the administration's ability to plan and organize.)

And Toto, being an outsider - someone that hadn't had the experiences of being a Blue student, of coming up with that particular brand of governance where everyone expected you'd change the world and was willing to accept the chaos wrought by you in the meantime in order to allow you to reach your full potential - hadn't recognized that he'd only seen half the picture when he was a lecturer at Blue.  Toto had gone on another few months, operating under the assumption that the Blue students were free of the impulsiveness, carelessness, and occasional downright stupidity that characterized normal teenagers, only to have the illusion shattered today, of all days.  After he'd gone out on a limb only 48 hours before, staking his bets on the students' ability to conduct themselves appropriately during their investigation abroad.  

Ron hadn't considered the full picture either, he'd known what the students were like because he'd been in thier shoes before, but he'd failed to account for his partner's experiences: Toto's lack of experience with the world that Ron was so familiar with.   That's where the breakup had been, where thier understanding of each other, of the issue of having the students tag along had fallen apart. The turmoil that Toto was trying to react to on the other side of the phone was making sense now, moreso than it had a few minutes before. 

Ron had drifted a little, his epiphany regarding Toto's understanding of his students taking up enough of his focus to push Toto's voice into the background

" - They'll be staying at your apartments after this." 

"Huh?" Ron came back to the conversation upon tidying up his understanding of the situation. 

"If we call them and they're not at the hotel or near it - and I mean within a block of it - they're staying at your apartments.  They can't be trusted to manage themselves, running loose unsupervised." 

"That's a solid plan. No other punishments for them for this? No hard labor? No hundred lines of "I will not run around Tokyo late at night unsupervised"?"

"Just the stuffed animals. If they're as precious to them as you've made it sound it should be enough.  Of course they're losing their ability to be unsupervised as well." 

"Well, I guess at least that part of the punishment will cover Knight too." 

"Huh?" 

"Oh, he stayed back. There are several conflicting reports on why, he says a headache, Alyssa claims he seemed jet lagged.  He actually still sounded miserable this morning too, I'm almost worried he's sick." 

"That or he's taking calls from the Alliance"

Ron barked out a short laugh. 
 
"I guess by that logic the constant supervision will be a punishment for him too, there will be no way for him to make contact with the Alliance if he isn't able to be alone.  As a consolation at least he won't have to hear about the stuffed animals anymore.  I tell you it sounded like he hated those things."

"I can't decide if I want you to tell me anything else you heard from them today."  The irritated edge to Toto's voice was starting to flag, the precious little bit of adrenaline that he'd gotten from hearing what the students had been up to overnight was wearing off. 

The ding and whoosh of a sliding door came through the phone. 

That's not the crime scene lab door...? 

Ah. 

He's getting his coffee. 

"I'll save you the trouble of worrying about it, they were perfectly good today otherwise.  Get your coffee."

Toto didn't say anything but Ron heard a little shocked noise. 

 "Maybe two, and something for your back before it starts hurting.  We still have the last two bodies to look over..." 

Toto pushed out a quiet huff of air.

Exasperated at being reminded what we're going back to, if I had to guess. 

The cashier's greeting, Toto's polite reply, and two thunks of something being set on the counter. 

Two coffees. 

Two accompanying beeps, the rustle of a plastic bag being filled. 

The confirmation tone from the card reader and the crinkling of a receipt that Toto took with the phone hand.

Ron's entire call became an extremely annoying mess of crumpled paper noises. 

He tried not to let that bother him.  

What exactly of value can I be missing in the few seconds it's going to take Toto to drop the receipt into the trash can at the entrance to the convenience store as he leaves? 

It only makes sense he'd carry the bag in the hand that he's not holding up to his ear.

The crumpling noises were overtaken by the rustling of fabric and then Ron was blessedly free of the receipt noises. 

Receipt in his pocket then. 

"You sure we need to look over the last two tonight?" Toto asked.

Ron felt a little shiver of unease run through him. 

Toto never backs down from work, especially not with an M family case. 

Ron tried to press down the feeling that there was something very wrong.  Toto hadn't called the students at all during the day, just sent the one text.  He'd defaulted to going to Ron's apartment after he'd left work, something he hadn't done except the one time he'd gone back to bring the cat and some clothes to Ron. The outburst when he'd thought Ron had an unexpected mic on him.  The nap that he hadn't wanted to get up from, the hesitance to go back to the crime scene lab. He'd actually crumbled and let Ron talk him into getting dinner, when normally Toto would have had bodies two and three out on the tables before Ron was ready to get to them. Toto was already calming down from the anger he'd had at the students just a few minutes ago. The utter lack of spoken out loud thoughts, actual silence from Toto, since they'd left the crime scene lab.  The willingness to give up for the night, to go home.  With none of the fire that Toto normally had in him for solving cases, for proving himself a competent detective, for saving lives. 

He's dead on his feet. 

The jolting sick feeling in his gut that Ron had first gotten earlier in the evening twisted in a way that made him start feeling nauseous. 

I'm listening to him fall apart in real time. 

Ron looked down at the syringes in a line on the counter.  He'd finally finished loading them, had emptied out every single remaining vial of his tranquilizers.   

One syringe was measured, one half milliliter, needle removed and syringe capped off for when he'd need it later, if he needed it later. 

Seven syringes completely filled up and three syringes partially filled, the remains of the partially emptied vials he'd had. 

Ron aimed one of the full syringes at the bottom of the kitchenette sink and emptied it, the clear liquid made a thin stream as it slid into the drain. 

He wanted to be where Toto was.

He emptied the second full syringe. 

Toto was stuck making too many decisions at the moment, being pulled too many different directions, had no option but to be the hands and feet of their duo. 

The third syringe was next. 

The students hadn't done anything to lessen Toto's workload. Hadn't called him or Ron with any information of interest this afternoon, had, thus far, only managed to provide a minimal amount of alliance intelligence.  Except for the intelligence, had only functioned to confirm Toto's work.  Ron already trusted Toto's work implicitly and hadn't needed or particularly desired confirmation that Toto was doing his job correctly. 

Fourth syringe was emptied. 

I can't do anything for him like this. 

Fifth syringe emptied.

"We need to look over the last two bodies, just in case there's details we missed." Ron said. 

Sixth syringe emptied. 

He hated that he'd needed to say it, hated that he needed to ask anything more of Toto. Hated that he hadn't managed to be present at the crime scenes, or at the very least been sober for all of them.  He might have been able to let Toto skip this if he'd done it right the first time around. 

Isn't there anything I can do? 

Seventh syringe emptied. An idea struck.

"Let's simplify what we need to do a little bit." Ron said. 

"Hmmm?" Toto sounded too tired to be curious. 

The fatigue that Toto was no longer able to hide made Ron's idea sound even better in his head. 

"I know I said we could call the students down to the crime lab if we found out they weren't back at the hotel like they needed to be, but we could just call them down anyway.  If they start heading to the crime lab now, they should make it within a few minutes of you getting back, they can help look over the two remaining bodies and we'll hit two birds with one stone.  Details from two victims recorded and no more worrying about what the students are up to." 

It would really put a dent in the work Toto needs to do.  If the students move fast enough, or Toto moves slow enough, they'd probably be able to get there before him, they'd be able to do the heavy lifting. 

The first partial syringe emptied. 

"I'll have to get off the phone to call them." Toto said, almost sounding unsure, as if he was daunted by the idea of having to ask Ron to part with the stream of information he was guaranteed as long as the line stayed open. 

"That's fine Toto, do it.  I have that microphone on your blazer, I'll be listening in as soon as I get it pulled up on my laptop." Ron tried to sound reassuring around the feeling of his stomach dropping. 

Second partial emptied. 

He can't be so tired that he's forgotten the discussion we had about the grey blazer earlier.  Could he? 

"How far out are you from the lab Toto?" Ron asked.

"Probably ten minutes... normally..." Toto said with some uncertainty, "I'm not used to heading this way so late and I walk slower when there's no one else to be in the way of... so maybe fifteen minutes?" 

The streets are empty, there's not going to be the issue of passerby overhearing what Toto's discussing.

The students will be at least 20 minutes, and that's if they're at the hotel like they're supposed to be. 

"Take a minute, Toto, drink your coffee and call the students, no need to beat them to the crime lab.  I'll get my laptop set up to listen." 

"Okay." was all that Toto said.  Ron heard the plastic bag rustle and a can being cracked open before the call disconnected.

Ron emptied out the third and final partially filled syringe, left the single measured half dose syringe on the counter with a fresh needle and alcohol pad, and scooped the rest of the emptied syringes up to drop them in the box with the other remains of his adventure with self medication.  

It took some searching to find his laptop. 

The loft and the rest of the secondhand store had become a constantly shifting stage with the color coding project, things that Ron needed found themselves crushed under piles of color coded clothing and decorations.  He hadn't used his computer in days with how poor the internet had been and how little anything outside of the immediate case had interested him.  He finally found it on the outer edge of the sepia pile of items.  

It took a minute to boot and then a few more minutes to finally connect and pull up the appropriate feed for the microphone in the grey blazer. 

The audio was worse than the phone had been, choppy, with random breaks and pauses, the result of the awful internet in the second-hand store.

"-lyssa, maybe." Toto's voice cut in and then out. 

The next noise was the sound of a call trying to connect. 

It's been nearly 10 minutes.

He's just now calling the students? 

The audio cut and skipped.  Ron expected that by the time he got a decent connection to Toto's mic again, he'd be hearing the start of a conversation. 

When the sound returned, Ron did hear a voice, just not one he expected. 

"-is unavailable at the moment. At the tone please record your message."  

Toto cut off the call before the beep for the message recording rang out. 

What the hell? 

"No Knight. No Alys-" Toto was using his thinking voice, he cut out again. 

Wait.

Wait. 

No Knight. No... he was definitely saying Alyssa there.   He just called her.  She didn't pick up.  Knight... I could see avoiding a call, we know he's tied up in something with the Alliance.  Allyssa has no excuse... unless...

Ron couldn't deal with the cuts in the audio.  Something was going on.  He NEEDED the information.  He disconnected his phone from the internet in an effort to get a decent connection on his computer. 

"-tter.  I'll try him."  Toto said.   The thinking-out-loud voice had a kind of focus in it that hadn't been present just a few minutes ago.   Toto sounded like himself again. 

Toto's thinking voice is back. 

Something is wrong. 

Toto had become quiet and pliable over the course of the evening in his exhaustion.  He only sounded like the version of himself that Ron was used to seeing on a regular basis when something was upsetting him. 

Something is really wrong if he sounds like this. 

The dial tone on Toto's phone started again. 

Miraculously, the audio didn't cut out.  

One ring.

That's not too abnormal.

Two rings. 

Ron started tapping the side of his computer with a finger.  If Hutter's phone was in reach, he'd be swiping open the call right now.

Three rings.

It could be in a pocket?  Across a room? 

Four rings. 

Dread started pooling in Ron's stomach. 

"We're sorry.  The person you are trying to reach is not -" 

Toto cut off the phone call with a beep. 

"Four rings.   Four rings on all three of them so far.  Their phones aren't out of battery." Toto's outburst was in his real voice, not his thinking one, "Why the hell aren't they picking up?" 

Toto's breathing was getting fast. 

Ron's heart started beating quicker. 

Something is very very wrong here. 

Toto's right.  Four rings and no one picking up is wrong.  Much more wrong than one or two rings and no answer.  One or two rings then direct to voicemail can be normal for phones that are out of battery or on do not disturb.   Four rings means that all the student's phones have battery and are receiving the calls.  The students just aren't picking up.  

Toto punched out a breath quickly, then spoke, "Ron I don't know what you think is going on, but I'm calling you back if Marsh doesn't pick up. If any of them call us back... then, I'll just merge the calls." Toto almost sounded like he was gasping as he said, "I can't deal with this mys-" and then he stopped, let out a slow breath and then cleared his throat. 

The dial tone sounded on Toto's phone. 

One ring. 

Ron held his breath.

Two rings.

"Come on Marsh" Toto whispered. 

Three rings.

Four rings. 

Ron could feel his heart slamming against his ribcage. 

"We're sorry, the person-" the phone said, Toto immediately cut the call. 

"Okay.... Okay...."  Toto said, like he was trying to calm himself down. 

The dial tone on Toto's phone started again. 

One.

Two.

Three.

Four rings. 

"We're sorry.  The person you are trying to reach is unavailable at the moment.  At the tone, please record your message." 

A beep. 

"Marsh, it's Officer Isshiki.  When you get this message I need you to call me immediately. Let me and Ron know where you and the other Blue students are, we're worried.  Call me back as soon as you get this message Marsh." 

Toto hung up the phone. 

The audio from the hidden mic was awful, but Ron could still tell that Toto's breathing was becoming harsh. 

Ron was trapped. The lines of text on his computer screen were coming to him as though it was through a sheet of ice. His left index finger frozen hovering over the side of his laptop where he'd been tapping nervously earlier. Right hand sat on the keys unmoving. 

Ron felt cold.

So cold. 

The students weren't picking up. 

They'd talked about this in the afternoon. 

The students agreed not to do anything ill-advised. 

They agreed to go back to the hotel.

They've never had a problem with answering their phones before. 

The students had the opposite problem, most of the time it was near impossible to keep them off their phones, much to Professor Isshiki's chagrin. 

Their phones were on. 

Their phones were receiving calls. 

None of them were picking up. 

Statistically impossible if all four of them were in possession of their devices. 

The hair on the back of Ron's neck stood up. 

Ron couldn't get his hands to move. 

Couldn't pull his eyes from their thousand yard stare at the computer screen. 

His vision was starting to blur.  It had been too long since he'd blinked. 

The dial tone on Toto's phone started again. 

One.

Two.

Three.

Four rings. 

"We're sorry.  The person you are trying to reach is unavailable at the moment.  Please leave your message after the tone." 

A beep. 

"Alyssa, It's Isshiki, call me to check in as soon as you get this." 

The phone hung up. 

"Who next? Who's most likely to check messages?" Toto said under his breath. 

Ron ripped his eyes away from the computer screen and finally reached for his phone. 

The dial tone on Toto's phone came through his computer speakers. 

The text messages. 
 
Their check ins. 

Alyssa was the last one to contact me. What did she say? 

Ron pulled up his texts. 

3:13 - "Still in the general area of the park.  Currently taking a short break, we're looking for something caffeinated for Knight, he's asleep on his feet.  We think we're going to do one more hour before we head back to the hotel.   Still haven't found anything useful, it's hard investigating without being able to talk to people, but we're trying our best." 

2:05 - "A few blocks from the park, we've been looking for CCTV cameras.  Not many around and we haven't noticed anything else that would give us good clues.  Do you think that we need to worry about public transportation as a possible means of the culprit leaving the area or is that probably a dead end?  We don't know much about the train scheduling here.  Do you think Isshiki-sensei could discuss with us later?"

1:10 - "We're walking the shortest route between the payphone and the park, apparently we took some wrong turns going to it the first time.  Hoping to find something of note from the culprit, nothing yet though.  We're doing good, will check back in in an hour."

I left them a little after twelve. 

They only checked in three times. 

They never said they were headed back to the hotel in the last check in. 

Why didn't I read their texts? 

Why didn't I read them? 

I just. 

How'd I assume a best case scenario and fail to check if I was right?  

It's been almost 6 hours. 

6 hours since their last message. 

I made this mistake. 

I was supposed to be checking in on them. 

At the very least I should have been answering Alyssa as she checked in. 

I should have noticed. 

I. Should. Have. Noticed. 

Ron felt a bit like he was at the bottom of a chasm or a pit.  Somewhere inescapable.  Somewhere light didn't reach. 

Toto was oblivious as he recorded a voicemail that would be sent to Knight's phone. He didn't know that the issue went deeper than the students failing to answer their phones.  For all the man knew, the students could simply have run off to do something fun and left their phones in the hotel rooms to avoid being tracked, could be caught up in a game or a shopping trip, could be at a movie or a museum that didn't allow cellphone use. 

Ron didn't yet have a clear picture of what was going on, but there was information that he had that painted that the situation as less optimistic. 

Toto hung up his phone, the fourth voicemail message recorded.  

Ron immediately hit dial on his phone. 

The chasm seemed to be dropping further into the earth. The likelihood that he'd be climbing out of it growing ever slimmer. 

The poor audio from Toto's hidden mic started playing Toto's ringtone.  Ron muted his computer and Toto answered the call before the second ring. 

"Ron!" Toto said with urgency.

Ron cut him off, "I heard through the mic. I read back through the messages I got from Alyssa this afternoon." Ron started. 

"And?" Toto asked impatiently. 

Ron pushed through the dread he felt to continue, "Like I said earlier, the last message I got was at three from Alyssa. I hadn't read it, just checked the timestamp earlier.  She didn't tell me they were going back to the hotel.   I assumed that they were." 

Toto was silent. 

The chasm opened further down,  Ron's teeth were trying to start chattering, he talked through it, "They were checking in hourly before three.  There shouldn't have been a reason they stopped checking in and they never said they were on the way back to the hotel.  Their phones are ringing when you call them, so we know they didn't run out of battery." 

"Something is wrong." Toto stated plainly. 

It was a poor way of describing the thing that both Ron and Toto were avoiding saying. 

The students had come to Japan with the claim that they had traveled independently for their own reasons.  An overwhelming body of evidence suggested that the students were in Japan at the behest of the World Detective Alliance. 

There was only one option for who it was that had likely intercepted the students if they were, in fact, cut off from communication. 

"I'm going to their hotel." Toto said. 

"It might be a trap." 

"Ron! I don't care if it is.  They have the students... No, SHE has the students.  I'm not letting this happen again." 

Under his breath, "It can't be like last time." 

A small mangled body, more bruised and broken than whole.  Three sets of dull, blank eyes. The sick grey color that Alyssa's and Knight's skin had taken on as Alice had left them to bleed. 

Ron hadn't forgotten any of it.   That Saturday night made its appearance in dreams, in thoughts that came up without him asking for them.  A look that a receptionist at Mofu's office had given him as he'd checked in a few weeks ago had made her turn into Principal Emme before his eyes.  A student that he'd seen out the corner of his eye on the train would be Udi, and then when he did a double take, he'd realize that she'd looked nothing like Udi at all. There was the time he'd scrubbed the kitchen sink at his apartment a little too aggressively while cleaning it and a metallic smell had stuck to his hands.  It didn't go away, even after he'd rinsed them off and suddenly he was back in the tunnels under Blue, watching as Alice bled Toto's students dry.  He'd found himself zoned out standing in the center of his living room a few minutes later.  The sunlight through the windows had burned dark squares into his vision by the time he'd gotten the sense to look somewhere else. 

Toto stopped talking, his end of the phone call turned into heavy footfalls and the sound of thick fabric being crushed into the phone's microphone. 

Ron didn't know where the hotel was. 

He sat with his phone clutched tight in a shaking hand. 

I need to do something. 

Toto was running into something that could be dangerous.  The students were missing. 

He was sitting on the edge of a couch, in a dark second-hand store that was half sorted by color. 

Useless. 

Useless. 

Useless.