A quick entry ^_^
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Identity
It wasn’t as if she usually did such things; it was a special occasion. Nevertheless, Officer Satou couldn’t help but feel very criminal doing it.
“3,4,9,0…” she murmurs as she types in the PIN number. And sighs as the rejection message once again appears on Conan’s phone.
The feeling of failure is accompanied with a blunt incredulity; once again, she questions herself on what sort of sanity she has lost, trying to hack a grade schooler’s cell phone. But you can’t leave that alone, that insistent voice tells her. That case.
It was a ridiculously difficult case for a murder. The burned, mutilated body on the mattress was the only sign that the matter wasn’t suicide; anything otherwise and, well… She and the inspectors were tearing their hair out trying to figure it out when – should it have been expected? – Conan Edogawa enters with the pretence of returning the victim’s purse, tossed aside some blocks away.
The entire puzzle was solved shortly afterwards. Satou remembers it clearly:
“A-re-re? Isn’t this weird?” Everybody turned at his over-loud voice as Conan flipped through the cell phone’s pictures. “See, here’s the victim doing a self-portrait in her room.”
“And?” Inspector Megure had asked.
“Look, the top of the mattress behind her had reached the ninth window rail. And the picture this morning…” He flipped to an identical picture. “…shows that the mattress reaches the tenth window rail!”
Satou was about to point out that, judging by the amount of light ash in the room, the sheets probably had been changed overnight for the winter, and so the blankets would obviously have been thickened. If not for the boyfriend outside sputtering the same thing before she could. Which he shouldn’t have been able to as he insisted that he didn’t see her at all that morning when the bedding was changed. Denial was fruitless when the forensics team verified that the boyfriend’s fingerprints were (otherwise unexplainably located) on Conan’s cell phone.
He was handcuffed and hurried away when Conan, reunited with his cell phone for a brief moment, received a call while standing beside Satou. “Oh, Hakase,” he said to the person on the other side. “What do you need?”
Though it was faint, the officer at his side heard the reply: “Can you come by? I finished repairing your other bowtie, Shinichi.”
“Thank you; I’ll be there soon.” He closed the cover and handed it to Satou. “Okay, you can hold it for evidence now. Just return it at Uncle Mouri’s.”
Shinichi, the professor had called him. It couldn’t have been a mistake; she knew the professor in question and he is quite a sharp-minded person – he even solved a couple cases himself.
Wait… Every time he does solve a case Conan’s always there. And… the same with the Sleeping Kogoro cases, now that I think about it. Why hadn’t I noticed that?
Don’t act like an idiot; the child’s just very bright! she tells herself. There’s no way that Conan Edogawa is actually a shrunken Shinichi Kudou – it’s just not medicinally possible.
Or is it? The professor seems to know something, otherwise he wouldn’t call him ‘Shinichi’ It’s perfectly possible he had some sort of new drug. And I don’t know for sure that the disappeared Kudou hadn’t gotten involved in some large scandal and disguised himself with it. There’s no better mask than that.
It just doesn’t work. Wasn’t Conan there at the same time when Kudou dressed up as that blue-caped person? And hadn’t there been a couple calls from Kudou himself? Certainly their voices can’t be the same. Also, surely Detective Mouri would have noticed the boy acting like the friend of his daughter, right?
The reasoning is driving Satou half-mad. Exasperated, she closes the phone’s lid with a sharp snap. Of course, she could just ask Conan himself when she returns his cell phone. Though, if he really is a hidden Shinichi Kudou, surely he wouldn’t confide in her?
But that idea…that’s worth a try.
---
“Oh, Officer Satou,” Professor Hakase says, surprised to see the policewoman at his door. “What is it?”
“I came to return Conan’s phone,” she says, showing him the device. “Is…he here?” she adds hesitantly, not seeing anyone behind him other than Ai, who is reading magazines on the couch.
“Um…yes. Ai, can you get him out of my basement? Tell him Officer Satou has his phone.”
“Okay, okay,” the girl says with a lilt of irritability, walking out of her view. Satou watches her vanish while the professor asks, “How did you know he was here?”
“Oh…I already asked at Mouri’s. And I just wanted to get it back to him myself, so… Ran said I should try here,” she replies with little hesitation. What is wrong with me, she sighs to herself, doing something as elaborate as lying?
“Officer Satou?” She jumps as Conan himself appears suddenly at her shoulder, child’s face lit with a child’s confused look. Yes, very much a child. “Ah… here’s your phone, Conan!” she says – perhaps a little too quickly, as the quizzical expression of his child’s body deepens. He nevertheless accepts it with a smile, grinning an adorable child’s grin.
Until he flips opens the phone.
Then there is a sudden change in atmosphere as his smile abruptly twists into surprise and…is that horror? Satou’s breath takes as her ears hear, “Officer Satou…did you look…in this cell phone?” in a voice unmistakably Conan’s but with a tone she has never heard from him before.
“Of course not,” she replies as calmly as she could manage. Which isn’t calm at all. “It is your phone, right…Conan?”
---
“She knows, doesn’t she, Kudou?” Ai asks in her neutral voice.
“Yeah. Or she at least strongly suspects it,” Conan replies. “She looked into my phone – there’s fingerprint powder in the keypad.”
“Shouldn’t there be?”
“Not as much as this. She probably looked in after finishing the fingerprinting, and the residue on her gloves fell between the buttons. It doesn’t look like she broke through the passcode, though; otherwise she’d call me ‘Shinichi Kudou’ to my face.”
“But how did she find out, Shinichi?” Professor Hakase asks. “She didn’t go through your cell phone, so…”
“Either she finally is serious about her suspicions or she overheard you calling me ‘Shinichi’ in that call earlier,” Conan finally replies. “Though I’ve probably been acting too much like myself anyway.”
“Especially when you two meet over a case,” Ai adds. “So? What are you going to do about it?”
“She’s not of the Organization, so I don’t think I have to worry too much. It is her, after all; she can keep a secret. But it’s better if I try to keep this from her somehow.”
“Good luck.”
---
Inside her car, Satou couldn’t keep from shaking. The microphone in her ears falls out silently from the persistent vibration, Conan’s – no, Shinichi’s – reassuring voice still emitting from the speakers.
---
“A-choo!”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“It’s the ashes from that burnt mattress yesterday. I think they’re still in my jacket.” Conan blows his nose, however, for the fifth time that day. Ai pushes her computer chair to the boy and asks, “Are you sure it’s not a cold?”, putting a hand on his forehead.
“Yeah.” *sniff* “Unfortunately. Otherwise I could become Shinichi for a day again and get Officer Satou off my trail.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Ai warns, returning to her laboratory work. “I won’t let you take another one until I can test one that seems to work.”
“I know that,” he replies irritably, taking another tissue from his pocket. “But I can’t think of anything that could counter what she recorded.”
Conan’s neighbor shoots her eyebrows up. “‘What she recorded’?”
“Right after I told you I’d be fine I found a bug well-hidden in my phone. I didn’t know she was this serious; I let down my guard,” he says, looking into the various flasks in the basement room.
“But…the Professor and I referred to you as Kudou in that time!”
“Yeah. That’s why I need something completely foolproof. And this isn’t Ran we’re deceiving this time; it’s Officer Satou, who nearly found me out a few times already.” Conan sighs and puts his fingers to his chin. “Are you sure you don’t have a good antidote?”
“I said no; you don’t even have a cold yet. And though I’m working on one that doesn’t need a cold, it’s not tested and there’s a chance it’s toxic because I misread something.”
Conan stops in his tracks. “‘Misread…something’?”
“Some of my work is of English letters that look identical. Like O for oxygen can look like C for carbon. With these things, a little mistake like that can lead to really bad results. So don’t touch my…Kudou?” Ai stares at the boy for a second, then smiles – a gentler reflection of the grin on the young detective’s face.
---
“You wanted to talk to me, Conan?” Satou asks, a tinge of nervousness quivering in her voice. Before her, the boy – who she now notices looks too much like Shinichi to be a coincidence – smiles in a most childish way. “Not me; Shinichi does.”
“Sh-Shinichi does?” she echoes, very surprised. Is he submitting? Taking her into his confidence? It seems too easy… “Is it about the case he’s working on?”
“Uh-uh.” Conan shakes his head vigorously. “He wanted to ask you about something that only you know.”
“Something…that only I know? What is that?” She watches the boy’s eyes for a sign of that person, sure that he is about to…about to…
“He doesn’t believe me when I say I help you a lot!”
Huh? “W-what was that, Conan?” Satou asks, sure that she heard him wrong.
“When he was at the Professor’s yesterday, I told Shinichi that I help you and the police a lot, and he says, “No, you don’t; you’re just a little kid,” and I told him that I’d have you tell him that I do. Can you call him, please? I help you a lot, right?” she hears him beg, undeniably child’s eyes wide. “You can use my phone!”
As she watches him dial, she hollowly asks, “He was at the Professor’s yesterday? Doing what?”
“Uh…he was asking the Professor if he had any voice changers.”
“For what?”
“I think somebody’s following him. Ah! You can ask him yourself!” Satou fumbles the cell phone as Conan tosses the ringing device at her. Before she could recover, though, a familiar voice goes, “Hello?”
“Conan?!” Satou exclaims, recognizing the caller’s voice instantly. “But…you…” She looks down in surprise at the boy at her side as the other line goes, “Oh, Officer Satou? Is that you?”
“K-Kudou?” she stutters, the sudden change of voice having shocked her. “T-that was you?”
“I’ve been practicing for the entire week; did I really sound like Conan?”
“Y-yes, but…why?”
“Oh, I thought a suspect recognized me while I worked on this one case. As I was in disguise, I thought I’d try using a different voice as well. I was at the Professor’s yesterday hoping to see if he made voice changers, but he had none other than those toys he made; he thought I should just practice more.”
“Oh.” She looks down pink-faced at Conan, and then remembers: “And…Conan’s been a great help to the police force! He notices a lot of things; did you train him?”
“He is? I guess that brat had been telling the truth after all. Ah, but I have to go now. Take care of Conan while I’m gone; he is probably going to get in a lot of trouble without your guidance.”
“Of course!” Satou reassures him, though vainly as the high school student had already hung up on her. After collecting her feelings in the beeping dial tone, she folds down the phone and says, “Here, Conan; I told him.”
“Yay! Thank you, Officer Satou! Well, see you.” Watching the boy leave her desk, Satou merely smiles. So he was just a boy after all. Then...
---
Conan exits the police headquarters with little resistance and a fairly light heart. Except for one thing.
He stops at the entrance. “A ‘brat’ that ‘is probably going to get in a lot of trouble’?” he repeats. “You didn’t have to do that, Haibara.”
From behind the corner entrance, Ai steps out from the shadows with cell phone and bowtie in hand. “Ah, is the little detective not full of gratitude for the one who kept his identity secret?”
“I already owe you a wallet,” Conan huffs, taking back both devices. “And — huh?” Just as the phone slides into his hand, it begins to ring. Shinichi’s phone.
Looking at the caller ID, his eyes open a little wider. With Ai smiling her mysterious smile beside him, he answers. “Hello?” he says with the aid of his bowtie.
“SHINICHI! Why didn’t you tell me you were in the area yesterday?!”
“Ran?! How did you know?”
“Officer Satou just called me! Jeez, you could have at least come by to say hello or something!”
“Ah…sorry…”
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