Inside Your Mind

13 - Aizawa

You soon find you have few choices

Shouta Aizawa was not happy when he had finally made it to the site of the incident in Hosu City. It was - yet again - the middle of the night and this time he actually had been asleep and was woken up by the call. It was Iida who made the call, probably because he knew Tsukauchi well and Tsukauchi knew that Aizawa was often awake late at night. Somehow over the years that had been reduced to If it's the middle of the night, call Aizawa, because he's probably awake anyway.

As he was getting to the scene he realized that there would probably be a good bit of guessing involved. He was faced with a completely burnt down house. A few neighbouring houses had been fazed as well, but not nearly as badly as this one. It looked like the upper floors had collapsed due to some structural damage.

At first, Aizawa had been skeptical when Iida called him about suspected arson in a residential area. Fires in a residential area were almost always accidents. So being called out in the middle of the night with the only information that there was a suspected arson in a residential area didn't leave Aizawa in a good mood. Seeing the building now, after getting out of the taxi (he couldn't drive himself with both his arms broken) it became a little clearer why they suspected arson.

"Aizawa! Good that you're here. There are some things that you have to have a look at!" he heard Iidas voice. Aizawa raised an eyebrow, suddenly becoming aware of the fact that no one could actually see it with all the bandages on his face. He sighed, wishing he at least was able to get a coffee.

"Alright, what do I need to see?" he asked, following Iida along to his police car. There were people all over the place, crime scene technicians, paramedics that were still taking care of some of the people in shock, police officers, fire fighters - all kinds of people. Why were crime scenes always full of people?

"Okay, so just a quick rundown. The place that burned down was an apartment building, three families living in it. The fire started in several places, there were several burn patterns found and we also found trails and splash patterns of an accelerant. The samples are on the way to the lab at the moment and we're still collecting debris. We have pictures of the fire when it was still burning and there was a lot of black, sooty smoke. Firefighters have confirmed this." Iida quickly gave him a rundown. Aizawa nodded slowly. So this was legitimately arson then. And it seemed like the arsonist wasn't even trying to hide the fact that it was arson. That already crossed out several of the classic motives for arson: fraud, vanity arson and arson to conceal other crimes.

"Okay, what else do we have?" Aizawa wanted to know.

"Well, the family on the third floor died. All of them. They were found in their beds and what we also found were charred remains of rope." Iida said. Aizawa took a deep breath and nodded.

"So you think they were killed intentionally? That someone tied them up so they couldn't get out?" he wanted to know. Iida gulped audibly and nodded heavily.

"It would seem so."

"Fuck."

"There was another thing. All the apartments had safes in them. Nothing was taken out of the safes, except for the safe on the third floor apartment. Everything was still in there, but something was added." Iida said next. Something was added? To the safe? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"Sorry it took me so long to get my uniform, Iida, my brother was awake and-" a voice chimed in. Aizawa looked up and met the surprised eyes of Kaori Shinsou. She blushed a little and looked flustered and Aizawa quickly realized why.