Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Case

Page 3: Opposition Pt. 4

"I've checked everything once," Ryuzaki said, standing up. He rubbed his hands on his jeans. Apparently he was at least aware that crawling around on the floor would make his hands dirty. "But I didn't find any money."

"You were looking for money?" Like a thief. An extremely blatant one.

"No, just in case. One possibility is that the killer was after money, but in that case, the second victim is significantly more impoverished than the first and third victims. There was a chance they were hiding something, but apparently not. Let us take a break. Would you care for some coffee, Misora?"

"Oh... sure."

"One moment," Ryuzaki said, heading for the kitchen. Misora wondered if he had jam in the fridge again but decided that she didn't care. She abandoned that line of thought, and sat down at the table. She had somehow missed her timing to tell Ryuzaki about being attacked. Oh well. She might as well avoid mentioning it, and see how he reacted. She had no proof her assailant had anything to do with Ryuzaki, but not telling him made it easier for her to catch him off guard.

"Here you are."

Ryuzaki came back from the kitchen, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee on it. He placed one in front of Misora and the other opposite her, then pulled out the chair and assumed the strange sitling position he had demonstrated the day before, with his knees pulled up against his chest. Ignoring the matter of manners, it looked extremely difficult to sit like that—or was it? Misora wondered, and took a sip of coffee.

"Augh!" she yelled, spitting it out. "Cough... hack... urrghhh..."

"Something wrong, Misora?" Ryuzaki asked, innocently sipping his cup. "Once something has entered your mouth, it should never be spit out like that. And those terrible moans do nothing for your image, either. You are quite beautiful, so you should try to present yourself accordingly."

"M-murderously sweet... poisonous!"

"Not poison. Sugar."

"..."

So you're the killer?

Misora looked down at the contents of her cup... which was less a liquid than a paste. Less like sugar dissolved in coffee than sugar moistened with coffee—a gooey, gelatinous mass glistening majestically in her cup. While her attention had been distracted by Ryuzaki's posture, she had allowed this substance to touch her lips...

"I feel like I drank dirt."

"But dirt is not this sweet."

"Sweet Dirt..."

That sounded like an avant-garde piece. The diabolic gritty feeling in her mouth would not go away. Across from her, Ryuzaki was happily sipping away... lapping away. Apparently he had not made Misora's cup this way out of sheer spite, but this was, in his view, a perfectly normal amount of sugar.

"Whew... coffee always picks me up," Ryuzaki said, finishing his cup and what must have been at least two hundred grams of pure sugar. "Now then, to business."

Misora would have liked to get up and go wash the sugar out of her mouth, but she tried to ignore the impulse. "Go ahead," she said.

"About the missing link."

"Have you figured something out?"

"It seems the killer was definitely not after money... but last night, after I left your company, I noticed something interesting. A connection between the victims that nobody seems to have picked up on."

"What?"

"Their initials, Misora. All three victims have rather unique initials. Believe Bridesmaid, Quarter Queen, Backyard Bottomslash. B.B., Q.Q., B.B. Both their first and last names begin with the same letter... what is it, Misora?"

"Nothing..."

Was that all? Her disappointment had clearly shown on her face and interrupted Ryuzaki's line of thought, but she couldn't even be bothered to try and cover. What a pointless waste of time. Misora had noticed that the moment she first saw the victim's names. It wasn't worth bringing up like this. 

"Ryuzaki... do you know how many people there are with alliterative initials in the world? In Los Angeles? There's only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, which means by a very rough calculation about one in twenty-six people has a name like that. Not even worth calling a connection."

"Oh? And I thought I was on to something Ryuzaki said, dejected. It was hard to tell how much of his reaction was genuine.

He appeared to be sulking, a trait which, in him, was not at all cute.

An absolutely terrible way to present oneself.

"I mean, you yourself are Rue Ryuzaki—R. R."

"Oh! I hadn't noticed."

"This is pointless."

She should never have expected anything from him. All that nonsense about him leading her through the deductions yesterday had been nothing but paranoia.

R.R.?

"Misora."

"Eh? Oh, what?"

"Since my deductions have come to naught, do you have any good ideas?"

"No, not really. I'm in the same boat as you... can't think of any real course of action except looking for another message, like we did yesterday. I feel like I'm dancing on the killer's palms, which irritates the hell out of me, but..."

"Then let us dance. Playing your enemy's game until he relaxes and lets a hint drop is a perfectly good strategy. So, Misora, if there is a message here... then where?"

"Well, we can at least guess the contents. Presumably the message has the third victim's name, Backyard Bottomslash, or her address. The crossword puzzle led to the first case, the book pages led to the second case, so..."

"Yes, I agree."

"But where that message is hidden, I have no idea. If we can figure out some sort of pattern, that would help us catch him, but..."

Something that should he here, but wasn't.

Ryuzaki had described it that way.

Referring to the victim, and to the bookshelves.

Was there something like that here? Something that should be here, but wasn't? Something that should be here but isn't here was starting to sound like a linguistic Mobius strip.

"So," Ryuzaki said. "If whatever we find will simply point us to the third victim, then perhaps it would be more effective if we skipped this scene and went right to the third one. After all, our goal is to prevent the fourth murder as well as solve the case."

"Yeah."