Chapter Two Part Two
“And this is what I love about being a detective,” Sakura announced to Sasuke as she triumphantly held up a small baggy. “We have a lead.”
“Yeah?” Interested, Sasuke looked up from his desk. It was the next day, and Yumato’s body had already been processed and the autopsy completed. The two detectives had returned to work early the next morning to pour over the folder holding the facts and pictures. “What is it?”
“A shred of clothing that isn’t from the victims,” she replied, tossing the precious artifact in front of him. “Medic Neji found it doing the autopsy, a little something we missed. It’s a no wonder, it’s so small. I’m sending it to the lab to get it analyzed.”
“Great.” Sasuke returned his attention to the book he was reading and Sakura put on a frowning, pouting look.
“Sasu!!” she scolded. “This is very important! And you just keep reading. What are you reading, anyway?” Before he could react she’d snatched the book from his hands and read the cover aloud. “ ‘A Guide to the Forensic Anthropologist and Basic Aspects’?” she raised her eyebrows. “Sasuke! What’s up?”
He grabbed it back. “I was just interested,” he muttered, shutting the book, putting it into a drawer and slamming the drawer shut. Sakura sat down.
“You know,” she remarked, pushing her chair back and straddling it, the favorite way of sitting in the precinct, “You’ve changed, Sasuke.”
“I have?” he glanced up. “How’s that?”
“Eh, just little things.” She picked up the bag of evidence. “Anyway, I’m sending this to lab. Want to come?”
“Nah,” he answered.
“Okay, it’ll be ready in a few hours.”
With that, he absorbed his attention into his book and before he knew it, Sakura had returned with the bag and a lab report. “We got it!” she sang, waving it around. “Lab says it’s a funky cotton, really light, meant for warm climates, like jungles. I’ve come up with a list of stores that sell it.”
“That’s good,” he answered, putting away his book. “So now what?”
“Now we go and interrogate the poor bastards.” She grinned. “We’re onto something, Sasuke, I can feel it!”
Almost an hour later, they arrived at the first of the stores on Sakura’s list. It was in the slums, a rundown store with dirt and dust and, understandably, empty of customers. Sasuke opened the door cautiously and, above, a bell tinkled. “Hello?” he called, stepping into the dim and dusty shop. “Is anyone here?”
“Eh?” An old, white haired man ambled out of a room in the back. “Is that customers?”
“No.” Sasuke flashed his badge. “I’m Detective Sasuke, and this is my partner, Detective Sakura. We’re here to ask you some questions.”
“Yeah?” the old man squinted at them. “What kinda questions?”
“You sell shirts here?”
“Yeah,” the old man replied. “I’m Orinaka, by the way.”
“I see. Well, Mr. Orinaka, what kind of shirts do you sell?”
“Come. Come see.” The old man led the way into his shop, where more dusty and rather moldy clothes were on hangars and folded.
“Anything cotton?” Sasuke asked, checking out a few of the shirts.
“Yeah, yeah, these.” The old man held up a shirt and Sasuke glanced at Sakura. She shrugged, then nodded, and Sasuke tossed some money at the old man.
“Keep the change,” he said, and took the shirt.
Chapter Two Part Three
Naruto had already returned from school that day, and it was with a little relief (but he wouldn’t admit it to himself) that he realized Gaara was gone. He graded the papers and did his work quickly, skimming over the answers and probably getting a few wrong himself.
When he was finished, he pushed away the paperwork and sat back in his chair with a sigh. The small apartment was, as usual, cloaked in darkness, one of the many aspects of Gaara he disliked so much, but of course there was nothing he could do about it. Gaara was Gaara. He flipped on the tiny television and turned on the news channel, turning the volume down low so he could hear easily over it.
This time the platinum blonde, whose name he hadn’t bothered to remember, was gone, replaced by a young man who had to be wearing a toupee, his hair looked so perfect. Not a strand out of place. Naruto turned the volume up and, as he did, a picture of a pretty, smiling young woman flashed across the screen.
“Yumato Kurio, aged 28, was found murdered early Tuesday morning in an alleyway on Tokyo’s east side. Her family has been contacted but, as of yet, police have no leads as to who the suspect is. If you have any information at all, police ask you to call this number at the bottom of the screen.” Subsequently, a number appeared, in big bold letters, beneath the newsman, and Naruto gazed at it. East side. He lived in East side. And Gaara’s shirt was ripped -
He startled himself by suddenly slamming the remote with his fist, suddenly plunging the room into a dimness as the TV switched to the dark blue screen for the VCR. The silence was sudden and deafening, and he breathed deeply in the darkness.
What had he been thinking? Gaara’s shirt was ripped? So what? It didn’t mean that Gaara, his Gaara, his dear brother of whom he would be nothing without had anything - anything at all - the least little thing - to do with this murder and the speckle of others occurring, always in or around East Side, always when Gaara was gone and always when Naruto didn’t know where he was, at night or when he was gone.
“No,” he said sharply in the silence. Why had all these doubts suddenly surfaced, only with these past few murders that he found himself wondering what Gaara was capable of? Trembling slightly, he reached for the remote and switched it back to the TV. More pictures, more smiling young women, were on the screen. He counted. Five. Five girls, five young women, murdered within the past two months. All in the East Side. All when Gaara was gone.
His hands tightened into fists and he muttered aloud, “Gaara is my brother. Gaara is my life. Gaara is my love,” uttering the mantras as though pleading for his life, as though he was desperately trying - and failing - to convince himself.
He continued repeating, over and over, the words, staring at all the girls, then at the police - the name beneath it read Captain Kakashi - as he was interviewed about the latest murders. He repeated them again and again, and when he finally stopped, for lack of air, the news had gone onto a silly commercial for children and he hurriedly shut it off.
“So many, Gaara...” he murmured to himself. “So many...”
He knew little about Gaara himself, even though they were half-brothers and had been together nearly - nearly - the better halves of their lives. He knew only the sketchy details of Gaara’s institutionalized period, when he had been tranquilized and brought to a mad house strapped to a gurney and screaming profanities. Gaara had an anger problem, that he knew, although he himself had never witnessed an actual attack - when Gaara got angry with him, he never hurt him. Never hit him. He could not; it was not in his psyche. Naruto was, after all, his brother, his flesh and blood, and he made sure that Naruto was aware of that, that the special bond they shared could not be broken.
Naruto had only been eleven when his fourteen-year-old brother was sent off to the institution - he was never told that the reason why was that Gaara had stabbed his father. As he lay bleeding on the floor, Gaara laughing at his side, his mother had tranquilized him with a sleeping substance she often took herself. It was then Gaara was sent away, and their mother carried the secret to her grave, never telling the unsuspecting Naruto.
Three years later, Gaara came back home. Their mother never lived to see the event. She died of breast cancer just before the seventeen year old Gaara arrived, and he made it his job to take care of his brother, now fourteen.
It was then, then, when Gaara had started taking care of him, when their mother was dead and they were all alone, that it started. Gaara had begun to kiss him, to tell him that as brothers, this kind of bond was fitting and there was nothing wrong. On some nights, especially when he angered Gaara, he took Naruto. Naruto, deprived of healthy relationships by his controlling brother, had never before gone through anything like it and Gaara quickly used it to control him, frightening him into submission by threatening to do something similar if Naruto disobeyed him. And, as they grew up, Naruto went to college and eventually became a sixth-grade teacher, he never once disobeyed Gaara.
And now, sitting in the small apartment, staring into the darkness, recalling all of this, something surfaced in his mind that never before dared to surface. What if he... disobeyed Gaara? What if he called the number, the number he’d stared at, at the police station, just leave a little anonymous tip, just enough to point toward his brother? Just a few, little words, enough to get his brother - his brother... his life - his love -
He reached for the phone, his fingers trembling openly, and touched the phone. Touched. He still recalled the number - it was fresh in his mind - all he had to do was call -
His fingers began to curl around the phone, to push the talk button, but then he froze as it rang, the shrill noise filling the apartment and his senses - it rang -
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