Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 9 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

  The world’s worst criminal

Two weeks had passed since the incident at the aquarium. During that time, we’d managed to find out what had happened to the sick fan Saikawa had been concerned about: She’d recently had surgery in America and was still in the hospital over there. In other words, the mummified hand had nothing to do with her.

That meant we still didn’t know what the enemy was after. Even so, Saikawa was delighted that her fan was safe, and she began pushing herself even harder at work. It was probably because she’d reaffirmed how she wanted to live, as her ideal idol.

She never let her fans see her looking gloomy, never complained, and never stopped smiling. She wore pretty dresses and kept on singing with her pretty voice…even when people said it was all just a pretty lie.

One day, Natsunagi and I visited the Metropolitan Police Department… Not because I’d committed a crime or something. We had business with someone in the building.

“It’s always such a big help that people recognize me,” I said.

We were sitting on the sofa in the room we’d been shown to, waiting for the person we were there to see.

“In a bad way, maybe. All the station personnel looked disgusted when they saw you, Kimizuka.”

“That’s because I’ve been coming here for ages. Mostly on false charges.”

Unless this trouble-magnet predisposition of mine got fixed, I’d probably be imposing on the police, prosecutors, and lawyers for the rest of my life. I guess you could add detectives to that list, too.

After we’d waited a while, the person we were waiting for yanked the door open and stalked in. “Dammit. Why are you people here?”

It was a certain disgruntled, red-haired police officer—Ms. Fuubi.

However, she was followed by an unexpected guest.

“Huh? Ookami?” Natsunagi’s eyes widened.

Ookami was the detective’s former proxy assistant, a member of the Security Police, and several other things—but all else aside, he was Ookami. The last time we’d seen him had been when we defeated Gluttony. Who’d have thought we’d run into him again like this?

“Ookami, what are you doing here? Natsunagi’s got all the assistants she needs.”

“I’m here on other business today. In fact, Kimihiko Kimizuka, I’m more surprised to see you here.”

After brushing me off, Ookami politely greeted Natsunagi. “It’s been a long time, Ace Detective.”

Natsunagi waved back. “Long time no see!”

These two get along really well, huh?

“So you and Ookami know each other, Ms. Fuubi?”

Natsunagi looked from one to the other. Both of them had public positions with the police, and they each had undercover jobs as well. They seemed to have a similar sort of status.

“Are you about the same age, too?”

“I’m younger,” Ms. Fuubi snapped, shooting me a glare. Apparently, she was pretty sensitive about that.

“You make a pretty good-looking couple, though,” Natsunagi said with a grin.

Ms. Fuubi looked disgusted, while Ookami replied, “Unfortunately, I’m not even on her radar. She’s still—”

“Enough, Ookami,” Ms. Fuubi said, shutting him down. Even if she was younger, Ms. Fuubi still had seniority when it came to their private jobs.

“Forgive me,” Ookami apologized. But what had he been about to say?

“So what do you two need? Is this about the mummy incident?” We hadn’t spoken with Ms. Fuubi about that, ever since she’d first called to share what she knew with me.

“I see you’re already in the thick of it. The mummies are vampire-related, right?”

“Yes, well. That means they should have been the Ace Detective’s job, but…”

I explained about Natsunagi and Scarlet’s alliance and gave them a brief rundown of Elizabeth’s story.

After I’d finished, Ms. Fuubi smiled sympathetically. “Sounds like it’s turned into a pain in the butt. It’s all yours, though,” she said, fluttering a hand at us. “I’m busy with my own thing.”

“Except you might have been pulled into this already.” Natsunagi kept her eyes on Ms. Fuubi, and the corners of her lips rose slightly. “After all, I brought him here.”

She pinched my sleeve between her fingertips.

Picking up on what she meant, Ms. Fuubi grimaced a little.

“I bet the previous detective did that all the time, too,” Natsunagi continued. “She took him to incident sites, put him in contact with lots of people, and used the ‘Singularity’ as a wedge to pry open connections. She hoped they’d pay off one day.”

The Singularity—my knack for getting dragged into trouble. Incidents tended to gravitate toward me, which conversely meant that if I was around, those incidents were bound to be solved at some point.

Naturally, I needed somebody to be the Holmes to my Watson. It wasn’t just the detective, though—everyone who was involved with me became an important figure. A character in the story. That was my predisposition, my fundamental nature.

“…Tch! At the very least, I don’t plan to actively involve myself in this incident.”

“Yes, that’s fine. If not this time, though, I’m sure you’ll get involved in some other incident someday, and save us. Or maybe it’ll be the other way around… Just kidding.”

I really didn’t think Ms. Fuubi would ever seriously ask us for help, but this seemed like a good time to trust the detective’s instincts and keep my mouth shut.

“Well, you’ve said your piece, so go home. I’ve got something to discuss with Ookami here.” Lighting a cigarette, Ms. Fuubi tried to run us off.

Geez. It didn’t feel nice being given the cold shoulder. “Ookami, say something to her, wouldja?”

“Don’t involve me in this. Why should I take your side?” Ookami gave me a disgusted—or rather, mocking—look.

“Ookami, please,” Natsunagi chimed in.

“If it’s a request from the Ace Detective, then I have no choice.”

“Hey, Ookami. That was a pretty drastic personality change you just pulled.”

Yeah, it was official: I was never gonna get along with this guy.

“If we’re talking about that incident, the Ace Detective is probably connected to it, in any case. Would you mind…?” Ookami politely asked Ms. Fuubi. In terms of their private jobs, apparently she did outrank him.

Ms. Fuubi sighed, thought for a few moments, then got down to business. “It’s about the Seven Deadly Sins.”

I hadn’t been expecting to hear her say that, and it showed on my face.

The Seven Deadly Sins were the Magical Girl’s former enemies. But I’d thought their story was already over.

“What were those things anyway?” Ms. Fuubi asked Ookami. “You’re the expert, so I wanted to get your take on it.”

Ookami had investigated the supernaturals independently to avenge the death of his old friend, the former Enforcer.

“I believe there’s another, more qualified expert…”

“I’m planning to ask the Magical Girl, too, once things have calmed down and she’s healed up a bit more.” In her own way, Ms. Fuubi was being considerate of Reloaded, who’d just stepped off the front lines. “Ookami. What do you think of them? And don’t give me the general lines like, ‘They’re enemies of the world that represent human malice.’ Any idea what they actually are?”

There were all sorts of theories: People who’d had weapons transplanted all over their bodies. Human-devil chimera. Still, Ookami had once told me that the origins of the Seven Deadly Sins were still unclear.

“My views on that haven’t changed: I don’t know. Even the Oracle couldn’t see what they really were. I’m not even a Tuner. But…” Ookami narrowed his eyes. “If you’ll settle for a theory instead of hard facts, I have one of those.”

“That’s fine. Lay it on me.” Ms. Fuubi sounded as if she had some solid suspicions of her own.

“I suspect Arsene, the Phantom Thief, is involved.”

Natsunagi and I exchanged a look. That name belonged to an enemy I’d faced just once, last summer, with Siesta.

“The Phantom Thief was imprisoned for the crime of stealing the sacred text. However, he somehow killed three of the Seven Deadly Sins from jail, and he was pardoned in recognition of that achievement. It all seems far too neat.” Ookami took out a cigarette and lit it. “I don’t know exactly how he did it, but my theory is that Arsene made the supernaturals.”

I raised my hand. “Then…you’re saying it was all orchestrated by the Phantom Thief?”

“Right. That’s how he managed to make it look as if he’d killed the supernaturals from prison… Granted, he may have actually done it,” Ookami added. “So? Thoughts?” He turned the conversation back to Ms. Fuubi.

“That’s pretty much what I thought, too,” Ms. Fuubi said, lighting a second cigarette. “Something kept nagging at me about that incident, and when I checked into it, I ended up drawing the same conclusion. Phantom Thief Arsene was and still is our enemy—there’s no doubt about that. But his tendrils may reach deeper than I first thought.”

“…So that’s why you helped us during the incident with Rill: You thought there was something odd about the supernaturals all along, and you guessed that Arsene was involved.” Natsunagi nodded as if everything made sense to her now.

In general, Tuners weren’t allowed to get involved in the jobs of other Tuners. Yet despite this, Ms. Fuubi had used excuses like controlling traffic and clearing the area to stay in the fight against the supernatural, right up until the end. Apparently, she’d had her reasons for doing so.

“Anyway, Kimizuka.”

“Ms. Fuubi, for some weird reason, hearing you say my name makes my heart skip a beat.”

“Anyway, you damn brat.” Did she really have to rephrase it like that? “You’ve heard the name ‘Abel’ before, right?”

The question had come out of nowhere, and my reaction was delayed for a moment.

I did know the guy, though.

“Who?” Natsunagi asked.

After a pause, I gave her the man’s full name. “Abel A. Schoenberg. He’s a shadowy criminal who’s rumored to be behind all sorts of unsolved incidents worldwide.”

It was said that he’d secretly been pulling the strings behind a whole spate of serious crimes. Yet no one had been able to uncover his real identity, and he was currently being pursued by the police and various other justice organizations across the world.

In fact, during my travels with Siesta, I’d gotten us dragged into an incident involving Abel. We hadn’t managed to catch him back then, either, and Siesta had postponed the matter because she’d been pursuing SPES.

“…I didn’t know about that. It’s hard to believe such a dangerous criminal hasn’t been caught yet,” said Natsunagi.

“For a time, destroying Abel was the Enforcer’s mission, but Amon was killed by the Seven Deadly Sins before he could carry it out,” explained Ookami. He and Douglas Amon, the former Enforcer, had been old friends.

As I’d thought, Abel had been designated an enemy of the world. So who was in charge of taking him out now? Our attention naturally converged on one person.

“That’s right. It’s my job.” Ms. Fuubi stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Getting rid of Abel is the Assassin’s current mission. I don’t even need proof of his crimes. They told me to ignore the presumption of innocence and kill him as soon as I find him.”

Fuubi Kase told us that killing people for the sake of justice was the Assassin’s mission, even if they hadn’t actually committed a crime.

“But why bring up Abel at a time like this?”

“They say he always makes total strangers carry out his crimes, although no one knows how he does it. He manipulates them so he never gets his own hands dirty. It’s not exactly the same, but does that remind you of anyone else?”

Ms. Fuubi’s question dredged up several possibilities from my memories—and I told her the theory I least wanted to be true. “Arsene the Phantom Thief can steal people’s hearts and manipulate them.”

It had happened last summer, right after we defeated Seed. While in New York for a Federal Council, Siesta and I had gotten dragged into a minor incident. Men with guns had demanded the release of a certain prisoner and tried to barricade themselves in the cafeteria.

Since Siesta had been there, the incident had quickly been resolved. However, strangely enough, the criminals had never even met the prisoner in question. They’d idolized him and perpetrated the incident for his benefit.

That prisoner had been Phantom Thief Arsene. Siesta and I had also run into him a little while later, but we hadn’t been able to catch him.

“It can’t be, though. You’re saying Abel’s true identity is Arsene?”

“It’s just a hypothesis I came up with while researching a few different things. However, if it’s true—it’ll turn the world upside down,” Ms. Fuubi said, staring at the white ceiling.

“I’ll be the one to catch him.”

That remark brought Ms. Fuubi’s eyes back down, and both Ookami and I looked at the speaker: Natsunagi.

“Catching the Phantom Thief is my job. The previous detective told me so.” Her unwavering eyes gazed out into the distance, and the force of her soul was behind those fervent words.

The detective sensed the presence of a great, unfathomable evil, yet she still walked toward the future.

“Haaaah, I swear. Are you people idiots?” Ms. Fuubi suddenly smiled, as if all the fight had gone out of her.

“Keep your paws off my case.”