Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 3 Chapter 5 Part 5

Chapter 5 Part 5

Ranpo Edogawa sat in the back of the police car alone, idly gazing at the nightscape as it went by. The sun had disappeared before anyone even noticed. As darkness with hints of blue hung over the city of Yokohama, only white and yellow lights drew his eye as they drifted across the car window’s glass like rain. Ranpo stared at the city while resting his elbow on the door. The city’s night was bright. The countryside he grew up in didn’t have artificial light, and everyone would be getting ready for bed at this hour.
The city is so much better.
Ranpo was absorbed in thought. Boisterous and puzzling still beat out quiet and dismal in his book. He hated the countryside. He hated the people, the school, and essentially everything else there. The only thing he liked was his parents.

“Hey, Officer.” Ranpo suddenly struck up conversation with the young cop driving. “How much longer until we get there?”
“We’re almost there,” the officer answered with a bright, amiable tone. “Oh,” Ranpo vaguely replied before returning his gaze to the city.
After glancing at Ranpo through the rearview mirror, the officer cheerfully said:
“You really impressed me today! Seriously, that deduction made me emotional! You’re a real mini detective! You and Fukuzawa make a great team together. I can already see your name in tomorrow’s morning paper!”
“Eh, what can I say? But I don’t think that old guy’s gonna team up with me.”
“Huh? Really? I totally thought you two were—” “He’s afraid of others,” Ranpo bluntly stated.
A few seconds of silenced passed through the car.
“Uh… That bodyguard guy’s supposedly a master martial artist. Plus, he’s known to be extremely scary… I heard even the police and military’s top brass get nervous when they meet him.”
Many members of police organizations hold qualifications in kendo and jujutsu. At times, their respect for masters of the art, be in a senior disciple or instructor, surpasses professional rank and position. Therefore, a martial artist of Fukuzawa’s caliber had quite a bit of influence in these organizations. In a sense, Fukuzawa was feared by both villains and police alike.
“It’s not quite the same. The old guy is afraid of something else.”
“Uh-huh… If you say so. You never cease to impress me. You just met Fukuzawa, and yet you’ve already seen right through him. I guess you can never underestimate the power of skill users, huh? What was it again? ‘The ability to uncover the truth’?”
“Yep,” confirmed Ranpo with a relaxed nod. “But you don’t believe that, do you?”
“Wait, wait, wait. Of course I do,” the officer replied in a panic. He then assumed a fake smile in a troubled manner. “Heh… I guess the cat’s out of the bag?”
“You wouldn’t even need to be a skill user to see through you. You mentioned that I had ‘just met Fukuzawa,’ which meant you called headquarters and found out that he and I first met this morning during the case of the murdered CEO. Why? Because you wanted to know how good I was.”
“I’m impressed. I underestimated you.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t like being doubted, so…how about I prove to you that I’m a skill user?”

Ranpo pulled out a pair of black-framed glasses from his pocket—his priceless gift from Fukuzawa.
“Oh, are you sure? What a treat. Feels like I’ve got a front-row seat to the honored skilled detective’s show.”
Ranpo put on his glasses with a sigh, then looked out the window.
“This car isn’t going to the police station, is it?”
Silence. Ranpo and the officer exchanged glances through the rearview mirror until a few moments went by.
“Sigh. You got me,” admitted the officer as he scratched his cheek. “I should have mentioned it before, but I got a call over the radio earlier. They told me there was an accident and to bring the great detective with me.”
“I see,” said Ranpo. His tone conveyed no indication as to how he was feeling.
“But you wouldn’t need to be a skill user to guess that much, right? I mean, I’m not doubting you, though. I just thought that since the police station was near the train station, it would be pretty obvious that we weren’t going there.”
“You’re exactly right.” Ranpo grinned. “Shall we raise the bar, then? How about this? You’ll ask questions about today’s incident, and I’ll use my skill to answer. If I get stumped, you win. If I uncover all the mysteries, I win. How does that sound?”
“Oh, now we’re talking! It doesn’t matter whether I win or lose because this is going to be fun! There’s no reason for me to say no! Can I start?”
“Be my guest,” Ranpo said.
The officer then pondered to himself for a few seconds while tilting his head.
“I’m sure this is something everyone wanted to ask, but…” The officer tapped the steering wheel with his finger as he spoke. “Like, you remember that man in the suit who was tied up onstage? The one who used the fake name. How was he captured and carried to that spot behind the screen?”
“Using a rug,” replied Ranpo while pushing up his glasses with a finger.

“There were a few long-haired rugs near the theater entrance, right?”
The officer looked up while rubbing his chin with a finger. “Oh… There were, now that you mention it.”
“After the panic, one of those rugs went missing,” claimed Ranpo. “The floor was bare, and there was a faint but strange smell coming from where the rug used to be. What’s that stuff called again? The stuff you find in paint and plastic that has that weird smell…”
“Organic solvent?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Ranpo nodded. “It was faint, but I smelled the same thing coming from the man who was tied up. In other words, the criminal wrapped that man up in the carpet and carried him there. The smell was probably coming from an adhesive. The criminal used a spray adhesive on the carpet to catch that suited man as he tried to escape. Then he used some drug to knock him out before rolling him up in the rug and taking him away. That man must be really good at running away for someone to go through that much trouble.”
“Hmm… Well, the stage was very hectic after the incident with ambulance crew and performers cleaning up blood and whatnot, so I guess if someone came walking through with a rug, they wouldn’t really stand out… But why? I know the accomplice was probably the one who carried him, but why would he go through all that trouble?”
“It wasn’t the playwright.” “Huh?”
“The playwright didn’t even lift a finger. In fact…he was probably killed before the play even started,” Ranpo added as if it were obvious. A change came over the officer’s countenance.
“Th-that can’t… Then who?”
“Everyone—other than me, of course—is so stupid and foolish and oh so lovable for it, which is why I wanted to save as many people as I could,” Ranpo said as he languidly rolled his neck. “But there’s nothing I can do for people who die before I know the truth, and that includes that elderly man who was killed solely to deceive.”
“Elderly man…?” asked the officer.
“I’m talking about that poor elderly man who died at the hospital in Murakami’s place,” said Ranpo with a subtle lift of his brow. “When I was explaining how I solved the mysteries, I lied that Murakami probably switched out IDs with someone who just happened to be similarly injured like him. But wouldn’t that just be too convenient for something so important to the trick? It was unnatural. It wouldn’t make sense for someone who was elaborate and bold with his scheme to leave things to luck like that. They waited for the perfect moment to stab and kill that elderly man. Sigh… All that just to kidnap a single man?”
“Do you mean…the murder wasn’t the objective?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. This large-scale scheme was put together solely for the purpose of kidnapping that gentleman in the suit. It was one long, elaborate trap. The playwright and Murakami were being used as well. They’re nothing more than pawns, too… Now do you believe I’m a skill user?”
“I—I…”
Ranpo leaned toward the flustered officer. “So how about you just tell me where this car is really heading?”
He then brought his head to the side of the driver’s seat and whispered into the man’s ear:
“I can smell organic solvent on your clothes, Officer.”

“Why can’t you get ahold of him?!” roared Fukuzawa.
The second floor of the theater was being used as a temporary police station where they were holding a meeting.
“I told you, I wish I could, but they still haven’t arrived at the station.
They should have had plenty of time to get there, though…”
Three officers were sitting in the theater’s conference room while exchanging information with their colleagues over the phone. The moment Fukuzawa heard that the playwright had been killed, he knew. The case still wasn’t over yet. If anything, this was only the beginning.
Because…
“There were two factors to this murder… You can think of it like a shrimp and a whale.”
Ranpo knew that from the very start. He knew there were two sides to this case. He figured out there was a greater, more sinister side to this other than the staged murder. The playwright was dead. This wasn’t a sham, but a real murder. Murakami had been clearly flustered ever since he heard the news. He was honestly confused and kept asking the police to explain things over and over again.
Fukuzawa felt in his gut that this wasn’t an act. While he was nowhere near as talented as Ranpo when it came to observation and reasoning, Fukuzawa had sharp enough insight to see that Murakami’s fear was real. Even a famous performer like him had forgotten how to act. Regardless, the playwright’s house where he was found was rather far away from the theater, and Murakami had been under police surveillance ever since Ranpo finished his stage monologue. Timewise, it would have been physically impossible for him to go to the playwright’s house, kill him, and return to the theater before that.
Who was really the one pulling the strings? Who was the real culprit?
According to Ranpo:
“It’d be easy to catch the shrimp…but if you want to get the whale, you’re gonna have to use the shrimp.”
He’d probably already figured out who the “whale” was. Murakami was obviously the shrimp. Ranpo implied that the shrimp was the mediocre part of this case. It made sense, though. Nobody died, and solving the case itself wasn’t that difficult, either. Even without Ranpo, Murakami wouldn’t have been able to live as a dead man and hide out for the rest of his life. The truth would have come to light.
But in the end, only half the case was solved. There was someone pulling the strings who used Murakami and the playwright for their scheme. The only person who could have answered that was dead. Now the only one who could follow the lost path to the real criminal…was Ranpo.
What if Ranpo’s sensationalized monologue onstage was all part of a bigger plan? What if his plan to catch the whale was still ongoing?
“What was the name of the police officer taking Ranpo to the station?” Fukuzawa asked.
“Jun Mitamura,” answered the detective, intimidated by Fukuzawa. “Why can’t you reach him?”
“That’s odd… His cell phone is turned off. He isn’t answering his radio, either.”

Fukuzawa began to get impatient.
What happened during the short amount of time he took his eyes off Ranpo? It didn’t matter that the kid was a quick-thinking genius. Even if he had already found out who was behind this and was trying to lure them out, he wouldn’t stand a chance if they attacked him. He was still just a boy, and the darkness of this lawless city was rampant with violence. Some wouldn’t even hesitate to kill a child like Ranpo.
“I’ll go look for them.” Fukuzawa quickly retired from the conference room.
Something had to have happened to Ranpo while he was heading to the station. Fukuzawa racked his brain, briskly walking forward. Did Ranpo have a plan? But he had no idea how corrupt this city was. Ranpo thought he knew everything, but he wasn’t a skill user. There was no way for him to know something unless he saw it with his own eyes.
And the one who made Ranpo believe he was a skill user was none other than Fukuzawa himself. He strode through the lobby until he reached the front entrance. Most of the patrons had left, and the area was now quiet. The moment he walked outside, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye where Ranpo had gotten into the police car. When he strained his eyes, he saw something white by the building’s wall and decided to check it out. It was a white business card. A rock was lying on top, perhaps to keep it from being blown away by the wind. When Fukuzawa got close enough, he immediately recognized that it was his business card.
It can’t be—
He picked it up, and sure enough, it did have his name and contact information on it. He couldn’t discern who he originally gave it to, though. Fukuzawa flipped the card over. Messily written on the back in pencil was:
Mitamura is the real culprit. Search for the cane.