Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.2

 Detective, assistant, and chief

The detective agency was on the second floor of a mixed-use building.

“So, how did you make it work this time?” I asked Siesta. I was leaning back into a well-worn sofa, opening the box of pizza that had just been delivered.

After the uproar near the hotel, the man with the knife had been safely handed over to the police. By the time we’d finally made it back here, it was well after sunset, and I still didn’t have a complete picture of the incident.

“Oh, I want a slice with lots of shrimp.”

Siesta had been in her usual spot at the back of the office, typing on her computer. Now she was drifting over to the freshly baked pizza, like a butterfly drawn to a flower.

“Siesta, are you listening to me?”

“I’m always listening to the voice of your heart. Snarf-snarf.”

“If you’re gonna eat with sound effects, at least be cute about it, wouldja?” I shot back, and I meant it. Siesta had taken a seat across from me and was stuffing her face.

“Once he knew for sure that she was cheating, the client flew into a rage and attacked his wife and her lover… Isn’t that what happened?” Nagisa asked. Bringing over three glasses of soda, she set them on the table in front of us.

“Well, one of our original assumptions was wrong.” Now that she’d finished a slice of pizza, Siesta finally began answering our questions. “The man with the knife—our client—wasn’t married to that model.”

Nagisa and I exchanged looks. Neither of us had been expecting that one.

“The client was stalking her. When he suspected she had a real partner, he hired a detective to find out for sure.”

…I see. In that case, we’d basically aided and abetted a stalker.

“But what about the copy of the family register he brought as proof that they were married?”

“Probably a forgery. There are people who’ll take on under-the-table projects like that.”

“So you realized he was lying back then, Siesta?”

“I didn’t find anything suspicious in the documents right away, but what he told us about his wife seemed rather unnatural.”

“How so?” Nagisa asked, sitting down beside her.

“It was almost as if he’d memorized an online profile. Superficially, he knew a lot about his wife, but there was no substance to it.” Siesta took a long swig of soda, then added, “For example, I know the things my assistant commonly says in his sleep, and that he likes his fried eggs with soy sauce, and I’ve seen him scrunch up his face when he takes powdered medicines. I know everything about him.”

“Huh? Are you trying to one-up me?”

“That’s the sort of information you can’t know if you’ve never lived with your partner. The client didn’t have any of that.”

Oh. So the client—or rather, the criminal—must’ve felt as if he knew the woman just from looking at her data. He’d probably started to think he was the only one who could understand her or something.

“I see,” said Nagisa. “You know, it did feel vaguely off to me, too.”

Now that she knew what had really been going on, Nagisa nodded as if everything made sense to her.

She was right: Even in the hotel, she’d seemed to think there was something odd about the incident.

“Hrmm. I’ve got to try harder. I’m already studying for school anyway,” Nagisa told herself, smacking her cheeks sharply.

Like me, Nagisa was majoring in psychology. According to her, there was a motive behind every incident, and behind that motive was a human heart. In order to grow as a detective, she said she needed to better understand the mind.

“So I was the only one who didn’t notice anything, then?”

Geez. If Siesta had figured it out, she could have filled me in.

“They say if you want to fool your enemies, first fool your friends, right?”

“That’s not fair… Well, I’d like to say it’s not, but were you trying to accomplish something by doing that?”

“If we were all on the same page, we wouldn’t be able to handle unforeseen situations. It’s like the way the pilot and copilot eat different meals on a flight to avoid any possibility of food poisoning. It’s risk management—we should be coming at this from different angles.”

“You mean even if we all have the same basic goal, sometimes it’s effective to intentionally have individual perspectives and do different things?”

I didn’t even have to think very hard to see we’d always worked that way.

“Actually, I found this a little while ago. It’s a private account.” Siesta held up her phone, displaying someone’s social media page.

“Does this belong to that model?” Nagisa asked. In a post, the OP mentioned feeling like they were being followed. The woman must have noticed her stalker.

“But it’s an anonymous account. How did you find it?”

“I just applied the same method I used to identify your account way back when.”

“You tracked down my account?”

And apparently she wasn’t planning on telling me how. This sucks.

“…Well, I’ll turn a blind eye to the past for now. Point is, you thought the woman might have a stalker, so you were on the scene again today.”

“Yes, although it was only a theory. I hadn’t completely ruled out the possibility that the client might have married the model in secret.”

However, because Siesta had noticed all the possibilities, we’d avoided a worst-case scenario.

“I used to be able to resolve these things a bit more neatly.” She smiled faintly, remembering distant days.

When she’d been a Tuner, Siesta had had a certain special notebook that granted its bearer every sort of qualification there was. If she’d used that, it would have been easy for her to check with the ward office and find out if the client and model really were married.

However, at this point, she didn’t have that sort of authority.

“I’m just a detective now.”

Right; she wasn’t a Tuner or the Ace Detective anymore.

She was only a detective, and…

“You’re also the chief here, remember?” I told her.

Siesta smiled. “Oh, that’s right.”

She was the chief, Nagisa was the detective, and I was their assistant.

About a year ago, peace had abruptly come to the world. The string of global crises that would later be known as “the Great Cataclysm” were resolved by the Ace Detective and many other heroes, and the world was saved.

As proof that perpetual peace had arrived, the Oracle, Mia Whitlock, had lost her ability to see the future. That meant global crises were no longer being recorded in the sacred text.

It had been a year since the Tuner system itself had been dissolved. Siesta had established this detective agency because she believed that, even in this peaceful world, somebody somewhere would still need justice. Nagisa and I had agreed, and we’d kept on working with her even as university students.

“Well, I’m not very fond of the name you gave us, Kimi.”

For no apparent reason, Siesta started criticizing the agency’s name, even though we’d settled on it a whole year back. Sheesh. As always, she’d had me choose because she couldn’t be bothered, and now all she did was complain about it.

“Hey, it’s a good name. The Shirogane Detective Agency.”

I’d borrowed the name of a certain benefactor of mine. I didn’t know why, but Siesta wasn’t happy about that.

“Still, the year just started, and I’m already wiped out.” I stretched, then relaxed.

This request had come in at the end of the year, and it had taken us until today, January 2, to solve it. I’d known there wouldn’t be holidays at any detective agency run by Siesta, but still.

“Should we relax and make our first shrine visit of the year tomorrow?” Siesta suggested unexpectedly.

Come to think of it, she’d always been the type to put seasonal events right up there with work.

“Hooray! A chance to wear a kimono!” Nagisa agreed enthusiastically, flexing her muscles.

It might be a break, but going anywhere with Siesta and Nagisa was bound to become a headache in one way or another. I felt I should replenish my energy stores while I could, which was why I bit into a slice of pizza. Just then…

“It looks like we have a job,” Siesta said. When I turned to look, she was opening the window. Cold night air blew in, and I put up the collar of my jacket. Then, with a rustle of wings, something flew into the agency.

“Thank you. I’ll take this,” Siesta told it, relieving our visitor (an owl) of the letter it held in its beak.

“What are you, some kind of wizard?”

“Don’t you know about carrier pigeons, Kimi? They can fly a thousand kilometers.”

My comment had been specifically because our visitor was an owl, not a pigeon, but more importantly… “Who’s the job request from?” I couldn’t tell from her expression.

Nagisa watched her, too, waiting for an answer.

Siesta’s eyes remained on the letter for a little while longer. Then, finally, she looked up.

“For the first time in a year, we have a summons from the Federation Government.”