Chapter Three
Part One
The phone rang - again, again - and a hand darted out to pick it up. “Detective Sakura,” a clipped voice said.
“Sakura.” The detective smiled at hearing her boss’ voice. “We’ve checked out the alibis to everyone you’ve interviewed - most of them are solid, and the ones that aren’t are being investigated. You’ve got more, haven’t you?”
“Yup,” she said, swiveling in her chair to get the list of addresses and sending a look of pure evil at her snoozing partner. “Three, to be exact.”
“Okay.” She heard a distinctively sharp noise over the phone, like someone falling back into a reclining chair and the captain sighed.
“We’ll catch the prick, Captain,” she said.
“Yeah... that I don’t doubt. It’s just that dealing with these damned reporters puts me on edge.”
“Tell ’em the killer’s a woman,” Sasuke, who could hear the voice of the captain carrying over the receiver, mumbled into his arms.
Sakura, surprised, turned to him. “What?”
He spoke louder, for the benefit of the captain. “Tell ’em the killer’s a woman,” he said. “Either that, or a man who can’t sustain an erection.”
“Why’s that, Sasuke?” Kakashi asked his detective. Sasuke yawned.
“All these murders in the East Side, the ones that we think are connected, you know,” he said, stretching, “there’s no sign of any sexual force at all. No penetration, no semen, no
nothing. I think this killer wants our limelight.”
Kakashi was sufficiently impressed. “You gotta reason for that, Sasuke?” he asked, reclining in his leather chair, the sound carrying over sharply.
“Sure.” Sasuke flipped open the vanilla folder containing the specifics of the case. “Victims are dead, no motive. No rape, no robbery, nothing. Rage, maybe? Anyway...-” he shrugged, “If I’m right, and the killer’s a woman, we get leads. If I’m wrong and it’s a man, it’ll be such a blow to his ego he’ll have to come forward.”
“And we’ve got the sons of bitches,” Kakashi murmured, following along perfectly. “Huh. Nice job, detective. I think I’m actually looking forward to feeding the hounds today.” With that, there was a loud click, and the captain disconnected the phone.
Sakura set the phone down into the cradle and sent a look that Sasuke couldn’t decipher over at him. “A woman?” she repeated. “We’ve had this little discussion before, remember? I was the one who said it wasn’t a man and you were adamant about it.”
“I changed my mind,” Sasuke replied. “Anyway, we’ll find out soon. We just gotta track down these last few names and we’ll have her. Or him.”
“Sure,” Sakura replied in such a dubious tone of voice Sasuke raised his eyebrows at her.
“Doubts, detective?”
“Doubts in you,” she shot back. Chuckling, shaking his head, Sasuke opened his drawer and, from underneath his book, took out a detailed map of East Tokyo. On it were fifteen markers of three colors; black, white and red.
“Okay,” Sasuke said, gesturing toward the map. “Five girls, all above the age of eighteen so far, have been killed by what we believe is the same guy.” Sakura nodded, concurring. “The black represents where they live; the white, where they worked; and the red, where they were found dead.”
Sakura stared at the dots. “They are all around. There’s no visible pattern at all. The killer is probably choosing random victims in a hasty decision and killing them there.”
“Ah,” Sasuke held up a finger, “But I realized this.” He drew an imaginary line along the red dots. “Look. The red dots form a line. Not a very straight line, but a line nonetheless.” He tapped his finger on the line, the imaginary line. “I think the killer knows this area well. He isn’t school age, because he has time to be transferring across town, but he doesn’t want to kill his victims in some unknown, unfamiliar area where he could easily be interrupted. Since there is no visible pattern or connection to the victims, the higher-ups won’t allow us to patrol any of the areas on here because we believe it’s random. But we can patrol this red line.” To emphasize, he tapped it again.
Sakura nodded. “So know we know where he kills - we just don’t know why, or who he is.”
“But if we keep an eye on this line, we’re sure to catch him,” Sasuke murmured, staring thoughtfully at the black dots.
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