Beastars: A Symphony of Life

Chapter 72: A Game Within The Game Begins To Unfold

"Another one?" she asked.

"Someone just called it in," the officer said.

"Same M.O?" Masumi questioned.

"Yup," they answered. "Member of the Jade Hybrids, in an alleyway, although this one was stabbed to death."

"Any new evidence?"

"None," they answered. "No tufts of fur or fingerprints. Nothing new."

"How far was it from the previous scene?" Wiru asked.

"Three blocks away," they answered.

"Let's take the distance between them and set up a radius of that length around each of the crime scenes," he said, looking to the police chief for approval. "Put patrols out there."

She nodded.

"I'll get on that," she said. She had barely gotten in and a new body had just been discovered. This new killer was another vigilante. That's how she knew they were different from Adler. That and the bodies were outside The Drusk. The caller didn't see anyone other than the body. If all went well, the killer would be caught the next night. They just needed to stay vigilant.

"Is your intuition telling you anything?" she asked the dog.

He shook his head.

"What about Razor?" he asked. "Anything new in that department?"

She shook her head. The chairman had left, leaving the tickets with them. He'd return the day of the concert with his choice of attendee, leaving the tactics up to them. What had this city turned into? It didn't seem real.

"So what got you into a federal agency?" the horse asked.

Wiru looked up from the evidence with his normal blank scowl.

"I used to be a professor," he said. "Field work didn't seem to suit someone like me. But, nonetheless, the director of the department wanted to get my take on a string of murders happening. They had reached a dead end. I gave my input. We caught her. And since then I've been dragged into investigations."

"What about the time you were in an asylum?" she asked.

Wiru glared at her, but at the same time didn't.

"I was put in the asylum under the pretense I had committed a murder and was insane," he stated, as if rehearsing from a script. "In reality, it was my psychologist who framed me to look like the killer. A doctor who worked for the bureau."

A small smirk appeared on his face before disappearing.

"How were you let out?" she asked.

"He gave testimony at my trial," he said. "Stating I had been in an appointment with him at the time and date one of the copycat's victims was killed. I have no recollection of any memory from that time. It's just a blank empty space."

Masumi nodded, going back to her own work.

"You don't believe me do you?" he asked.

"I'm just trying to judge if it's safe for my men to be around you," she said. "This doctor you keep mentioning, their name isn't recorded anywhere."

"That's because he did such a good job of covering his tracks no one even suspected him," he said. "Until he fell for a little trap of my own. He fled after that."

"Why isn't anyone looking for him?" she asked.

"I acted on my own," the dog said. "No one in the bureau was aware. For all they know, he moved. I'm already on thin ice, so I can't tell anyone. There's no evidence."