Page 5: Clock

Ryuzaki finally reached the townhouse where the third murder had occurred at just past three.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Misora," he said, not appearing the least hit guilty about showing up an hour late.

"Don't worry, I wasn't waiting. I started without you," Misora said, as sarcastically as possible.

'I see," Ryuzaki said, going down on all fours and scuttling over toward her. She was getting used to it, but it happened so suddenly she almost jumped. She hadn't seen him for three days, after all.

On August 6th, after speaking with L, she had gone back to Quarter Queen's apartment and told him that the fourth murder would happen in six days, on August 22nd. Naturally, Ryuzaki had asked her how she knew, but Misora had no idea. And she couldn't just say that L had said so.. .but while she and Ryuzaki talked the matter over, Misora had figured it out. Her answer was more than convincing, hut she didn't feel like explaining it to Ryuzaki, so she simply stuck to her guns. In retrospect, Ryuzaki had let the matter drop a little too easily... but they had eventually decided to investigate the third crime scene, Backyard Bottomslash's home, on the 19th. In the meantime, both Naomi Misora and Rue Ryuzaki would look into the background of the case and make other preparations for their investigation.

Misora had spent the time staying in regular contact with L, advancing her own theories and obtaining a range of useful information as a result (including some new discoveries the police had made and L

had relayed on to her), but the truth was that, on the 19th, even after arriving at the third crime scene and spending several hours investigating it alone, she felt like she had made no significant advances since downtown on the 16th.

"Did you already check the bathroom, Misora?"

"Of course. You?"

"I glanced inside before I came upstairs. But that bathtub's ruined. Painted like that, the only person who would dream of climbing in is Elizabeth Báthory."

"He wipes every single fingerprint, but not a drop of blood. Finicky types are always like that. The killer honestly doesn't give a damn about anything but himself."

"Yes, I agree," Ryuzaki said, but despite his words he seemed to have no problems crawling around the blood-spattered floor... or did he just not care? Just like the killer... Misora watched his movements carefully.

"I don't think there's anything here," she said. "I went over it pretty carefully."

"My, my. I never thought I'd hear you be so pessimistic, Misora."

"I'm not... just, Ryuzaki, I feel like the focus of this scene must be the severed limbs. The left arm and the right leg cut off... this is the biggest difference from his previous victims."

"Like you mentioned before, something that should be here, but isn't? In that case, what we have to think about is why the killer dropped the right leg in the bathroom and only took away the left arm. A whole arm. Not nearly as easy as taking away two volumes of Akazukin Chacha."

"And they still haven't found the arm... it's not that easy to dispose of body parts, so if the killer took it with him, then there must be a good reason for it. I don't know if that's the message... or if it isn't a message, there might be some kind of mark on it that the killer doesn't want us to see."

"Possibly. That makes sense. But crushing the second victim's eyes pointed to our blind spot, and to glasses, so carrying away the left arm must mean something.. .but once again, it's the right leg that bothers me, Misora. The killer's treatment of it is so muddled. You yourself said that disposing of a body isn't easy, but neither is cutting one up. It must have taken ages. It doesn't strike you as rather dangerous to do something like that in a townhouse? There are houses on either side, sharing walls, and they might notice at any moment."

"Both limbs were cut off right at the root... the body was found over there. Right, pictures, pictures Misora flipped through the folder she had already taken out and produced the photographs of the third crime scene. The same picture that had helped them figure out the message at the second scene. She held the photograph up, lining it up with the room and pinpointing where the body had been. "It was over here, lying on its back, with the right arm and left leg flung out wide... hmm…"

"Well, if your theory is correct, we have plenty of time before the next murder takes place. Let us be thorough. Speaking of which, don't you think it's time you explained why the fourth murder will happen on the 22nd?"

"Yeah, I suppose."

Misora put the photographs away and turned toward Ryuzaki. He wasn't facing her. They'd known each other five days and had met three times, and it was becoming clear that Ryuzaki was not aware that it was customary to face the person you were speaking with. But by this point, she was hardly going to dwell on something so insignificant.

"It's such a simple matter it almost seems like a waste of breath. The third murder happened on August 13th, right?"

"Yes, you don't even need to check."

"There were Roman numerals on the first victim's body, but this time we have Arabic numerals.

Thirteen... 13. If you write a one and a three next to each other... they look like a B."

"Yes," Ryuzaki nodded.

This was so simple she had worried that he would laugh at her but he seemed to be taking it surprisingly seriously.

"Come to think of it, I once saw a children's game show where they asked what one plus three equaled, and the answer was B..."

"Exactly. B."

"B.B.? But Misora, that works for the third murder, since it took place on August 13th, but what about the other dates? The cross word puzzle reached the LAPD on July 22nd, the first murder wis on July 3

1st, the second on August 4th. and you've predicted ilu fourth on August 22nd.. .none of which form the letter B."

"Not at first glance. But apply the same principle following a different pattern. The easiest is the first murder...July 31st. Three and one. Reverse the two and you get thirteen."

"Okay, I'll grant you the 3 1st. That seems reasonable enough But what about the fourth and the two 22nds?"

"Same thing. Just change the pattern. Take the problem you mentioned from the children's game show one plus three. August 4th four is the normal answer to that equation. And August 22nd if you take one from the tens place and put it in the ones place you end up back at thirteen," B.

Thirteen.

"In other words, every day the killer takes action, the 22nd, the 31st, the 4th, the 13th...the tens place and the ones place add tip to four. In each month there are only those four dates that do that. Only four.

And something happens on every one of those. Also, the Wara Ningyo started out at four. One plus three equals four. And this might just be a coincidence, but worth putting on the pile the gaps between the cases, four days and nine days, if you add four and nine, you get thirteen... B."

"I see. Not bad," Ryuzaki said, nodding. Misora beamed.

"Picking up on the similarity between thirteen and B is a pretty good idea."

"Isn't it? So the fourth murder will happen nine days after the 13th, on the 22nd. Nine, four, nine... I considered the possibility of another four, and the murder happening on the 17th, but it seemed far more likely that it would be the 22nd. After all, something already happened on that day last month.

And there's absolutely no way to get from seventeen to B, no matter how hard you try. So the fourth murder can only take place on the 22nd."

The 17th had already passed, and there had been no related murders in Los Angeles on that day. She had been a little worried, but the strength of L's declaration had kept her calm. She had told herself that four days and nine days adding up to thirteen had been pure chance, an irrelevant coincidence that the killer could afford to ignore.

"If I could add one thing," Ryuzaki said. "That particular method of transforming twenty-two to thirteen is a little forced. Bending the argument to suit your purpose—there's no reason to move the one from the tens place like that. It's not like switching the numbers from thirty-one to thirteen. That explanation was clearly created after the fact."

"Eh... but, Ryuzaki..

"Don't misunderstand me—I fundamentally agree with your reasoning. Just not that particular point."

"But... then..." If he refuted the most important date, the entire argument fell apart. He had effectively refused to agree with anything she'd said.

"But I have a suggestion. Misora, you were raised in Japan, right? Then you are more familiar with Japanese numerals than I am."

• . Numbers in kanji?"

"Visualize the kanji for twenty two."

The kanji...

She pictured the characters in her mind, but they failed to suggest anything.

"Well?"

"No, I don't know what you..."

"Oh... then let me try a hint. Misora, imagine that the middle kanji, the kanji for ten: is a plus sign.

Which means 1 is actually two plus two."

"Oh."

That wasn't a hint. It was the answer.

"Add them together and you get four... and you already explained brilliantly that four was one plus three. After all, if one plus three is B, then we have to put one and three together, which is the same as one plus three, which create the shape of the letter B. That's exactly why we can read twenty-two as I.

We just need enough reason to add the numbers together. And with this condition, your reasoning for placing the fourth murder on the 22nd sounds accurate. I was somewhat bowled over by the force of your conviction earlier, and was a little nervous about following your lead, but now I feel as happy as if I'd drunk a mug of molasses."

That metaphor gave Misora heartburn.

But apparently Ryuzaki believed this was why she had said the fourth murder would take place on the 22nd. Not full marks, since his reasoning for the actual date was better than hers, but she could relax a little.

"But Misora," Ryuzaki said. "One more thing."

"Yeah?"

This was the second one more thing.

It caught her off guard.

"Your theory is based on the assumption that when the killer chooses his victims, he requires that they have the initials B.B. But like we discussed, there is still a possibility that the killer is after Q.Q., not B.B."

"Oh, yeah..."

If the fourth victim turned out to be a child with the initials Q.Q., lying face down, then their theories would be thrown out the window.

"If it is Q rather than B, then your theory doesn't hold water. You would have created it from nothing, forcing it into existence based on faulty logic. Based on coincidence."

"Coincidence... that the number thirteen looks like a B? But it's so blatant… and Q just fits in there so neatly..."

"Yes. I agree. I don't believe any of it was coincidental. But your theory is based on hindsight. Created after the fact. I want to know why you chose to build your theories on B, not Q."

"Well..."

Because L had said so. Rather firmly. "The killer is B." She'd known in advance. But she couldn't tell Ryuzaki that. She had to keep L a secret from him. She couldn't let her guard down and let something slip, no matter how much they spoke.

"I guess with three victims... there were two Bs to one Q, and B just seemed more likely. I thought about Q afterward, of course, but I couldn't find any patterns that related to it she said, trying to cover.

But even as the words left her mouth, she knew they sounded unnatural.

And sure enough, Ryuzaki dismissed it, "That's so arbitrary. Nothing to support it at all." Her good mood was gone now. She bit her lip—she had reached those conclusions working backward, trying to figure out a reason for what L had said. L's word supported it, so it was probably right, but that didn't change anything

"The killer is B."

"What?"

"No, I mean, he's so obsessed with the letter B. Maybe that very obsession is part of the message, and the killer's initials are B.B. as well."

"Or maybe they're Q.Q. Like you said, a lot of elements of the case do point to B, but it's also possible we simply haven't stumbled across the signs pointing to Q."

"Yeah...I suppose so"

"That said, I do think B is more likely than Q as well. More than ninety-nine percent," Ryuzaki admitted.

Essentially retracting the last few minutes.

"There's a good chance the killer's initials are B. The victims are all B.B., and the killer is too... things are getting interesting."

"Interesting?"

"Yes. Anyway, be careful next time, Misora. If you agree with something, you must have sufficient reason to agree with it. If you disagree with something, you must have sufficient reason to disagree with it. However accurate, a deduction based on a fallacy means you have not defeated the killer."

"Defeated? Ryuzaki, is this really a matter of winning and losing?"

"Yes," Ryuzaki said. "It is."

Because this was war.

L was said to never move on a case unless there were more than ten victims or a million dollars at stake. The only exceptions to this were cases at difficulty level L (extremely fitting), or when L had personal reasons compelling him to get involved. The Los Angeles BB murders were both of these. I hardly need to point out the difficulty by this stage of the story, and L was essentially fighting his own dead copy. The current head of Wammy's House had told Quillish Wammy/Watari, who had told L

about B's disappearance in May, and ever since L had been looking for him even as he solved his other cases. Wammy's House only knew him as B—they did not know his real name, Beyond Birthday, so this search was near impossible, but L at last picked up his trail when the murders started—which is why L knew who the killer was. He had not been looking for a killer so much as he was looking for a case. L had been waiting, expecting Beyond Birthday to do something to challenge him. L could move any policeman in the world, but in this case, he did not ask anyone for help except Naomi Misora...

more than likely, for this reason. I don't think L really put that much stock in honor, but everyone is embarrassed by their own sins, and nobody wants those missteps to become public knowledge.

L was the goal of everyone in Wammy's House.

Every one of us wanted to surpass him.

To step over him.

To step on him.

M did, N did, and B did.

M as a challenger, N as a successor.

B as a criminal.

"Ryuzaki, did you find anything new?"

Now that they had finished debating the matter of dates, Misora took a breather, went down to the kitchen on the first floor, made two cups of coffee (with normal amounts of sugar, obviously) and carried them back up to Backyard Bottomslash's room on a tray. She was holding the serving tray in both hands, which made opening the door rather tricky. Since the handle was at waist height, she was able to reposition herself a little bit and hook the tray on her belt buckle. She found Ryuzaki lying in the middle of the room, flat on his back, with his arms and legs flung out to the side. Misora froze in the doorway.

"Find.., something?" Misora repeated, for no reason at all.

He wasn't going to make a bridge and start crawling around with his back to the floor, was he? Like something out of a horror movie.. .Misora gulped nervously, but to her great relief, this was apparently too weird even for Ryuzaki. But what was he doing?

"Urn, Ryuzaki?"

"I'm a corpse."

"Hunh?"

"I have become a corpse. I cannot answer. I am dead."

She understood this. The word 'understand' has a connotation of acceptance, which she sincerely wished to avoid, but it seemed clear that Ryuzaki had adopted the same pose as the third victim.

Obviously, his left arm and right leg remained attached to his body, but with that in mind he did match the pictures of Backyard Bottomslash's bitter end. Prom a practical standpoint, Misora could not see any point to his behavior, but she was not the kind to interfere with other people's methods of deduction. Instead, Misora tried to figure out if, on her way to the desk, she should step over Ryuzaki or go around. She did not want to step over him, but it irritated her to go around.

"Um… mm?"

And then she noticed. At least, she noticed that she had noticed something. But what had she noticed?

Something had caught her eye... no, before that, the moment she opened the door her attention had been overwhelmed by the spectacle of Ryuzaki playing dead, so how could it have? That wasn't it. Then what would she have seen first if Ryuzaki were not lying there? If Ryuzaki had not been in the way of her carrying the coffee... if he had not been there... then nothing. The room would have been perfectly ordinary, if a little frilly. She could barely smell the blood. The only thing out of place was the hole in the wall... the hole?

"The mark left by the Wara Ningyo?"

It was just a hole, and hard to make out. But if it was not a hole, but the Wara Ningyo? Then the first thing that would catch her eye upon opening the door, just based on line of sight, was not Ryuzaki playing dead, but the Wara Ningyo. The moment she opened the door, she would see the Wara Ningyo... one of the dolls had been carefully placed in exactly that spot. And all the Wara Ningyo had been nailed to the walls at exactly the same height (at about waist height, if you were as tall as Misora) but the distance from the walls on either side changed depending on location. But at each location, when she had opened the door...

A hole.

"Excuse me, Ryuzaki"

Still holding the coffee tray, Misora stepped... no, vaulted over Ryuzaki. At least, she meant to, but she was so distracted she missed her landing, and stomped on his stomach. In boots. And she reflectively tried to keep her balance, and avoid dropping the tray, which left her putting her entire weight on Ryuzaki's abdomen.

"Gah!" said the corpse.

Naturally.

"S-sorry!"

If she had spilled the coffee on him as well, Naomi Misora's reputation as a klutz would have been cemented forever, but in actual fact, the matter did not go that far. Her martial arts experience had honed her sense of balance. She put the tray down on the desk and picked up the police file. She checked to see if she had remembered correctly.

"What is it, Misora?"

Ryuzaki may have been an impossibly weird freak of a man, but even he did not go so far as to rejoice at the pain of a woman stepping on him. He stopped pretending to be a corpse, rolled over, and crawled toward her.

"I'm looking over the charts of the crime scenes. In each of them... I noticed the same thing. About the locations of the Wara Ningyo."

"The locations? What do you mean?"

"When we investigated the scenes, the police had already taken the dolls away, so I never noticed before... but there is a noticeable trend in the placement of the dolls. This scene included—when you open the door to enter the room, the first thing you see is a doll. There is a doll directly opposite the door—the killer arranged it so that when you come into the room, the first thing that catches your eye is a Wara Ningyo."

"Oh yeah..." Ryuzaki said, nodding. "That's certainly true for this room, and now that you mention it, I remember seeing the hole in the wall when I went into the first and second rooms as well. But Misora, what does that mean?"

"Er... um..."

What did it mean? She felt like it was a major discovery, and had stomped on Ryuzaki's belly in her enthusiasm, but now that he asked she didn't have an answer. Awkward. She couldn't admit the truth, so she scrambled to string something together.

"Well... it might have something to do with the locked rooms?"

"How so?"

"At all three scenes, the person who discovered the body opened the door and came in. Using a spare key or breaking the door down. They all came into the room… and saw that creepy doll on the wall.

The Wara Ningyo was the first thing they saw No matter what, their attention was drawn to it, Maybe while their attention was distracted, the killer, who'd been hiding in the room, slipped quietly out the door..."

"As classic a locked room detective novel trick as the needle and thread. But Misora, think about it. If you wanted to focus someone's attention, you wouldn't need the doll."

"Why not?"

"If there was no doll, then the first thing they would see is a dead body. Just like you froze when you came into the room and saw my corpse. All he had to do was slip out of the room when someone came in and was staring in shock at the body."

"Ah... right. Of course. So... did he want the person who found the body to see something besides the body first? I can't think of any reason why, but..."

"Neither can I."

"If he didn't want them to notice the body at all, I would understand, but what could he gain from arranging it so they didn't notice the body for a second or two? But in that case, why put a Wara Ningyo there? Is the placement just a coincidence?"

"No, I'm sure it was deliberate. It makes no sense to dismiss it as coincidental. But approaching it from this perspective doesn't strike me as very effective. Like I said before, rather than focusing on the Wara Ningyo and the locked room, I would prefer... I think we should concentrate on figuring out the message the killer left behind."

"But, Ryuzaki... no, you're right." She almost argued but stopped herself. It certainly was worth pursuing, but she didn't have any follow-through at the moment. First they needed to identify the fourth victim, or at least the location. There were Wara Ningyo at all the scenes, but the message was only in this room, and they needed to find it as soon as possible. "Sorry. I was wasting valuable time."

"I would rather you apologize for stepping on me, Misora."

"Oh, right, of course."

"You mean it? Then as a token of your contrition, would you do something for me?"

"Okay..

Could he be more blatant? But she had stepped on him.

Very hard, with her full body weight.

"What?"

"Would you pretend to be dead, Misora? Like I was a moment ago. The victim, Backyard Bottomslash, was a woman, so you might provide more inspiration than I did." Apparently this private detective was unaware that most people possess something called self-respect.

But this was not the time to point this out to him. If she did, Naomi Misora felt she would be well on her way to earning a reputation as a tsundere-- prickly to hide her inner drippiness. And the matter was urgent--- she was willing to try anything that might help. She wasn't sure if this was one of those things, but by this point she was even willing to try crawling. Peeling oddly resigned, she lay down on the floor. The room looked really different from down there.

"So? Anything?"

"No, not at all."

"Oh. Yeah, I thought not."

Futile.

Ryuzaki sat on the chair with his knees against his chest, pointed out that the coffee Misora had made was getting cold, and drank his. Misora had put sugar in the way she liked it, and half expected him to complain, but he didn't say anything. Apparently he was capable of consuming non-sweet things too. It seemed she could get up now, but it felt more awkward to do so than to stay down here, so she didn't move.

"Whew... hot coffee helps the pain in my belly," Ryuzaki said.

He seemed so nonchalant, but he just wouldn't let that go.

"Ryuzaki. . .was this the same as the first victim? After she died, he took the clothes off, then cut off the arm and leg, and then put the clothes back on?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"No, I know it's easier to cut up a body without the clothes getting in the way Clothes are pretty sturdy, really. They get tangled up on the blade. But once he has the clothes off, why does he put them back on? Why not leave his victims naked?"

"Hmm..."

"With the first victim, putting the shirt back on hid the cuts on the chest, or at least hid that they were Roman numerals. But this time.., it must have been a pain in the ass. Putting clothes on a corpse.. .on anyone who can't move themselves..."

"Misora, the leg he abandoned in the bathroom was wearing a sock and a shoe."

"Yeah, I saw the picture."

"Then, I mean, perhaps the killer's goal... no, the killer's message has nothing to do with the clothes or shoes, but only to do with the severed limbs. Which is why he put everything else back the way it used to be."

Put everything back.

But then...

"But then... the left arm and the right leg. He left the leg in the bathroom and took the arm with him...

why? What was different about the left arm and the right leg? An arm and a leg Misora muttered, staring up at the ceiling.

Ryuzaki looked up at the ceiling as well, and said slowly, biting his thumbnail, "Once.. on a different case... something happened that might help here. If you'd care to hear it?"

"Go ahead."

"It was a murder case, and the victim had been stabbed through the chest. Afterward, the ring finger of his left hand had been cut off and carried away. After his death. Can you guess why?"

"The ring finger of the left hand? That's easy. The victim was married, right? The killer must have cut it off to steal the wedding ring. Wedding rings have often been worn so long they can no longer be taken off."

"Yes. The killer was after money. Afterward, we successfully tracked down the ring on the black market and were able to trace it back to the killer and arrest him."

"But... that's certainly an interesting story and everything, but Ryuzaki, no one would cut off an entire arm to steal a ring. And Backyard Bottomslash wasn't married. According to the file, she wasn't even seeing anyone."

"But there are more rings than wedding rings."

"But you still wouldn't take the entire arm."

"Yes, you're right. That's why I only said it might help. If it didn't, then I apologize."

"Not worth apologizing for, but there was no ring... no ring..." So, something besides a ring?

For example... a bracelet.

Not around the finger, but around the wrist... no, that was retarded. It made a certain amount of sense that you would need to cut off a finger to get a ring, but no matter how generously you looked at it; there was no reason to cut off an arm for a bracelet. Nobody would do that. And this killer wasn't after money, anyway. If he was, the second victim didn't fit.

"…"

Misora slowly reached her left arm out toward the ceiling. Holding it away from the floor. She opened her hand and stretched her fingers out all the way, as if trying to grab the fluorescent light overhead.

There was a ring on her finger. An engagement ring from Raye Penber. An engagement ring that still seemed about as real as a joke between two children to her, but was it possible someone would cut off her finger, her arm, to steal it? What if it was a bracelet? No. Using herself as an example just made it seem all the more unlikely.

Holding her arm up like this had allowed her sleeve to slide down toward her shoulder. Her wristwatch came into view. It was a silver watch. A present on her birthday this year, February 14th, again from Raye Penber. So if it wasn't a bracelet, but a watch? It was silver, so it wasn't cheap... a watch?

"Ryuzaki. Was Backyard Bottomslash right or left handed?"

"According to your file, right handed. What of it?"

"So... chances are she would have worn a watch on her left arm. So perhaps what the killer took away...

was a watch," Misora said, from her position on her back on the floor. "The right arm still had a sock and shoe. So the arm he took away more than likely still had a watch on it."

"He cut off the arm to steal the watch? But why? Misora... you yourself said that it didn't make any sense to cut off an arm to steal a ring. So why would someone do that to steal a watch? If he were after the watch, he would have just taken it. Watches aren't like rings. They never get stuck. There's no reason to cut off the arm."

"No, I don't think he was after the watch either. But maybe the watch is this scene's message. If only the watch was missing it would be too obvious, so he took the arm too..."

"As a form of misdirection? I see... but in that case, we still don't know why he cut off the right leg as well. I doubt she wore a watch around her ankle. And even as a case of misdirection, there's still no need to take the whole arm—the wrist would have been plenty."

"Yeah, true enough, but still... the watch idea itself still seemed like a good one." She felt like she was nearing the truth. If that same unnatural fixation, to use a cliché phrase, that she'd encountered at the first and second scenes was working here, than she felt like it would manifest itself this way...

"Left arm... right leg... left wrist... right ankle... left hand... right foot... watch... clock... timepiece...

ticker.. both hands and feet, both arms and legs... or are the bits left behind what really matter' Not the left arm and right leg, but the right arm and left legs? The four limbs..."

"Plus the head is five."

"Five… five minus two is three… three. The third scene. Limbs... and the head make five... the head?

The neck... the neck, and one leg, and one arm..."

Misora was stringing words together as they came to her—but she was just spinning in circles, like a lost child, afraid of running into a dead end. The more she babbled, the more she lost the feeling that she was on to something. The hands of her compass were spinning...

"If five minus two is three, then he could have cut off both arms or both legs, or the left arm and the head... if the left arm had to be one of them, then why the right leg?" Purely to fill the silence, Misora forced out a question that had not occurred to her, a question she did not even consider worth asking. but Ryuzaki took her up on it.

"The head and arm and leg left behind are all of different lengths..." For a moment, she didn't know what he meant. It seemed like a total non sequitur, and her mind couldn't keep up with it. But an arm was longer than a head, and a leg was longer than an arm, but so what? Was Ryuzaki just blurting out whatever crossed his mind the way she was? But that wasn't going to help guide her compass needle...

"Needle? Or hands..."

"What about needles?"

"No, hands..."

The classic locked room trick with the needle and thread. But that had nothing to do with this... but hands? Could that be...

"A clock! Clock hands, Ryuzaki!"

"Hunh? Clock hands...?"

"The hour hand, minute hand, and second hand! Three of them! Each of different lengths!" Misora slapped the floor hard with her upraised arm and used the impact to push herself up to a sitting position. She moved quickly over to Ryuzaki, grabbed the coffee cup from him, drank the contents in a single gulp, and slammed the empty cup down on the table as if trying to break it.

"At the first scene he took Akazukin Chacha away to point us to Insufficient Relaxation, at the second scene he took the contacts to point us toward the glasses, and here at the third scene, he took away the wrist watch... and turned the victim into a clock!"

"The victim... into a clock?" Ryuzaki's deep-set eyes stared at her with a calmness in stark contrast to her own excitement. "By clock you mean..."

"The head is the hour hand, the arm is the minute hand, and the leg is the second hand! That's why the killer took the watch with him, and that's why he didn't just take the watch or just cut off the hand, but cut the arm off at the root and had to cut one of the legs off as well otherwise, there wouldn't be three hands left!"

All that came out in one breath, and at last Misora felt her feet on the ground again. She took a picture out of her pocket the picture of Backyard Bottomslash's corpse. On her back, her arms and legs... no arm and leg spread out, the left arm and right leg missing Backyard Bottomslash.

"Look at this, Ryuzaki. See? The head is the hour, the arm is the minute, the leg is the second, so this is 12:45 and twenty seconds."

"Mmm. When you put it that way..."

"When I put it that way? It's obviously the message he left behind. And he tossed the leg into the bathroom because it was only the watch he needed to take away, and he wanted to emphasize that!"

"…"

Ryuzaki fell silent, apparently thinking.

"Let me see that," he said, taking the picture from Misora's hand. As she watched him pore over it, turning his head at all sorts of strange angles, Misora began to feel like her theory was completely wrong after all. All of this was only useful if it led to a message, and if he said that it was a baseless coincidence it would all fall apart—her deduction had no proof, could never be proven. It had been produced by pure instinct. The battle decided by instinct—by her instinct she would be victorious, or fail.

"Misora."

"Yes? What?"

"Assuming your theory is correct... from this picture, there is no way to be sure that the victim's clock is pointing at 12:45 and twenty seconds."

"I mean, look," Ryuzaki said, holding out the picture.

Upside down.

"Hold it like this, and it's 6:15 and fifty seconds. Or like this..." He turned the picture sideways.

"Three o clock and thirty-five seconds. And if you turn it 180 degrees again, 9:30 and five seconds."

"Oh."

Of course. He was right. The picture was taken with the body vertically, so she had just assumed that the head... the hour hand was pointing directly upward, at twelve o'clock. But if you really looked at the victim as a clock, that was not necessarily the case. It might be, but it might not be. Just change the angle of the picture and there could be infinite possibilities. Or at least 360. The hands might not move, but the numbers could be placed anywhere around them. There was no clue indicating how to place the numbers.

"If the victim represents the three hands, then this square room is presumably the numbers. The victim was lying in the center of the room, after all. And the victim was placed like this, parallel or perpendicular to the walls of the room, so I think we can assume it is one of the four patterns I mentioned- But four patterns is still too many. We need to at least get it down to two, or we can't really say we've solved the killer's message."

"The room... is the numbers?"

"Now that I think about it, the first message involved Roman numerals... which are often used on clock faces. But there are no Roman numerals in here. If only there were some hint to tell us which wall goes with which number..

Which wall was which time...? But there was nothing out of the ordinary on any of the walls, nothing that might indicate a number. One wall had a door, and the opposite wall a window. Another had a walk-in closet... or was it directions? The compass again...

"Ryuzaki, do you know which way north is? If north is twelve..."

"I already thought of that, but there's no logical reason to assume that north is twelve. This isn't a map, after all. It might be east, or west, or south."

"Logic... logic... yeah, yeah, we need proof, or at least something reasonable... but how can we tell which wall? There's nothing..."

"Indeed. It feels like there's a wall blocking our path, too tall for us to climb over."

"A wall? Good metaphor. A wall... a wall..."

A wall? The Wara Ningyo were on the walls. There had been two of them in here. Did that connect?

Did the dolls finally have meaning here? Misora half forced herself to decide she couldn't see anything else that might be a hint, and pushed her thoughts into that channel. The Wara Ningyo. Wara. Ningyo.

Straw dolls. Dolls. Stuffed animals? Stuffed animals... in the frilly room. Too many dolls for a twenty-eight-year-old woman...

The stuffed animals piled against the walls.

"I got it, Ryuzaki," Misora said.

This time she was calm.

This time she did not get worked up.

"The number of stuffed animals... the stuffed animals on each wall. The number of animals is pointing to the time. See? There are twelve of them against the wall with the door. And nine over there… twelve o'clock and nine o'clock. If we view the whole room as a clock, then the door goes on top."

"No, wait a second, Misora Ryuzaki interrupted. "Twelve and nine are certainly true enough, but there are five dolls over here, and only two on the fourth wall. If we use four numbers to indicate a clock face, then they should be twelve, three, six, and nine. Not twelve, two, five, and nine. These numbers don't fit."

"Of course they do. If we count the Wara Ningyo."

Misora looked again at the two holes in the wall.

"If we add the Wara Ningyo to those two stuffed animals... we get three. And if we add the Wara Ningyo to those five stuffed animals... we get six. This makes it work. The third crime scene itself is a clock. The entire room is a clock."

Misora put the photograph of Backyard Bottomslash down on the floor, where she had been lying a moment before, and where Ryuzaki had been lying before that. Carefully, making sure it was the right angle.

"6:15 and fifty seconds."