WARNING: Morbid Comedy, Spit-take Warning.
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The Grey Zone: Seattle
by Icka! M. Chif
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We're not scaremongering, this is really happening, happening...
Mobiles working, Mobiles chirping.
Take the money and run. Take the money and run. Take the money...
Here, I'm alive, everything all of the time.
Here, I'm alive, everything all of the time...
Radiohead, "Idioteque"
In the Pacific Northwest, they caught a ride with a nice elderly lady named Jessica Fletcher. Ms. Fletcher was a mystery novelist from Cabot Cove, Maine and was doing a cross-country trip of her own to visit old friends and come up with more exciting story ideas.
Seven bad directions, three murders, a case of food poisoning ---thankfully no one in the car-- and a flat tire later, Kaito and Saguru said good-bye to Ms. Fletcher and decided to strike out on their own again. For one thing, being shot at by assassins was beginning to appear the much safer option.
The similarities to Kudo Shin'ichi and Edogawa Conan hung silently in the air, but neither of them mentioned it, lest it bring that sort of karma upon their heads.
So it was with a vaguely giddy feeling of exhalation --and having once again slipped past a bullet-- that they found themselves backtracking back to the outskirts of the home of Starbucks Coffee: Seattle, Washington. Washington the State, not the country's capital. Why they had two places named the same thing on opposite coasts was a mystery to Kaito.
Only to discover that the police were looking for them and Ms. Fletcher, because Frank, the head cook and owner of a diner that they had stopped to eat at the day before was missing.
... Karma was a bitch sometimes. Especially Karma brought on by close proximity to someone who had obviously done grievous harm in a past life.
They ended up hanging out with some other travelling pairs while the Police went over everything. A blond girl named Millie was supposed to have met someone at the diner the day before for an appointment and was rather worried about missing it. A friend of hers, a scruffy British bloke named Mason, was keeping her company, alternately comforting and teasing her about it. They were nice enough, although they felt kind of weird to Kaito.
A pair of brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester were in the area on a hunting trip. They seemed nice enough, but people tended to give them strange looks and some leeway once they found out what the brothers were hunting.
Kaito wasn't entirely sure what a 'something-squash' was, but the idea of going out to hunt squash with big guns was kind of weird. So he played cards with Millie while Saguru and Mason discussed the mangling of the English language by Americans in general.
By the time evening rolled around, Frank's Wife, a quiet woman who Kaito had yet to get her name, offered to serve her mother's famous 'Donner Family Beans and Weenies' to everyone involved in the case and was promptly heralded as a saint. The woman had blushed, brushed it off and happily bustled off to the kitchen to serve it.
The officers cheered, visibly brightening at the prospect of hot home-cooked food during a worrying case as they wolfed down the food as soon as they got it. The people at the tables Kaito and Saguru were sitting at were last to be served, but the food was no less welcome.
At least until Kaito got a chance to look at the food. "Hobbit?" He inquired, picking at a bit of meat floating among the beans and holding it up. "My slang might be mixed up, but I thought 'Weenies' were a sort of sausage?"
Saguru paused, his first forkful halfway up to his mouth. "My god." Saguru croaked a distinctly green pallor to his already pale skin as his fork dropping out of his suddenly slack hand with a clatter. "It's not Beans and Weenies, it's FRANK and Beans!"
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The police found the rest of Frank in the freezer. Lots of them had to go be sick in the bushes, despite comments from superiors that the vomit was evidence. The Winchester brothers left and Millie and Mason seemed to try to communicate with their food.
Saguru decided that he'd rather not know the motivation for this case and they left as soon as they got permission. Privately, they both discussed the merits of going Vegetarian, but eventually discarded the idea. And Kaito couldn't get the image of man-eating squash out of his head.
They caught a ride into town and caught a random bus, Kaito falling asleep as soon as they started moving. He was aware of time passing, then Saguru woke him up to get off the bus. They bought tickets for another city, changed disguises, then settled down for a wait, Kaito curling up for a nap. He was aware of Saguru leaving for a while for a while, then returning with something edible and Kaito allowed himself to drift off into a deeper doze, trusting Saguru to wake him up to get on the bus.
When he woke up, it was with the feeling that more time had passed than he would have thought. The bus terminal had almost completely emptied out except for the group that was gathered around the small television set at one end of the lobby. Saguru was sitting next to him, a slight frown marring his features.
Kaito yawned and stretched, getting the blood moving in his limbs again. "Everything okay?" He asked softly, glancing around. He didn't sense anything out of the ordinary, other than a sense of excitement from the crowd around the television, which wasn't really all that unusual. Probably an American Football game on.
"We missed our bus." Saguru said, quite clearly not looking at him. Kaito blinked, then gave Saguru his full attention. Saguru had a few tells for when he was lying or feeling guilty and not looking towards the person he was talking to was one of them.
"Okay." He agreed slowly. So they missed their bus. They did that frequently, it wasn't the end of the world.
Then some of the conversation from the crowd around the television drifted over. Something about an explosion. And a bus.
Saguru was examining the floor with rapt interest. "Hobbit?" Kaito questioned, feeling the first tendrils of dread creeping in.
"I was testing a theory." Saguru considered softly, his tone of voice completely miserable. "And misplaced my mobile."
"On purpose?"
"Yes." Saguru nodded.
Kaito thought about it for a minute. "On the bus we missed?"
"Yes." The level of misery in Saguru's voice rose a notch.
Kaito raised an eyebrow and idly rubbed his chin, the slight stubble scratching at his fingers. Theory. Misplaced Mobile Phone. Explosion. Bus. While he was getting better at this detective stuff and Saguru was getting better at the thieving stuff, he still didn't quite fit the puzzle pieces together quite as instinctively as Saguru or even Kudo and Hattori did. There was something here he was not getting.
"Where's your mobile?" Saguru questioned softly, rubbing the toes of his shoes against the tile floor.
"In my bag." Kaito responded immediately, knowing where all of his stuff was at any given time. Saguru knew this. "The battery died yesterday while I was talking to Hirokini and I haven't had a chance to recharge it."
"I called Hirokini right before I lost the mobile." Saguru's voice was flat, lacking its usual smug inflections. "Told him which bus we were taking."
And then left the mobile on the bus.
The same bus that was the current source of excitement in the bus station, having been in some sort of explosion.
The puzzle pieces clicked.
Kaito stared in Saguru in shock, a sense of horror rising even as he tried to deny what the detective was implying. "Hirokini-kun..."
Saguru rubbed his forehead, looking like he had a headache. "It was a pattern I noticed shortly after our visit to Chicago. If we were incommunicado with him, such as our joyride with the talking car, it appeared we had a bit more breathing space. At least until we told Hirokini where we were again."
No... The word was right on the edge of his lips, but his throat was too tight to actually say it. The A.I. was their friend, had been helping them out since the beginning. There was no -way- that Hirokini would be...
Except that the Black Organisation had to be tracking them somehow. He reached up and fiddled with one of the camera earrings he wore.
"I disabled the batteries in them." Saguru said softly. "Your other devices as well. I wasn't entirely certain, didn't -want- to be certain, but I couldn't to take the risk either."
"So your theory..."
"Appears to be correct." Saguru appeared to take no pleasure in having been proven right, Hirokini was his friend as well.
Hirokini was helping the men in black find them. Kaito pinched his eyes shut, struggling against the rising bitter feeling of betrayal and losing.
"'Guru?" Kaito swallowed, studying the floor as well, his face tight.
"Yes?"
"I'm gonna switch over for a bit." He said mechanically, allowing the cooler, analytical and more importantly, slightly detached Poker Face rise to the surface of his mind and take over. "Okay?"
Saguru finally glanced at him, a silent message of 'do what you have to'. He nodded back, just once, and Saguru leaned back in his chair with a tired sigh.
"Take a nap." The Kaitou Kid advised. "We still need to figure out where to go from here."
+fin+