L 17-2 Job

There were two piles on the table in front of L. One was a sweets tower of dango, youkan, manju, and candies stacked to L's aesthetic taste. Panda-shaped cookies from box of Panda's March marched in a line atop the tower.

The other was a pile of cell phones. Scrawled on the backs of each were names of heads of state, directors of intelligence agencies, as well as the names of religious leaders, CEOs of global corporations, and mob bosses, all of whom essentially had a hand in running the world. These phones were L's personal hotlines.

"See the man leaving the church?" L said, looking up at the moni- tor. "He's the serial killer murdering the clergymen. The probability is 86 percent. If he's the culprit, we'll find mementos of each of his victims in the crypt under the church."

"Concerning the DSGE's request to investigate the death of Princess Joanne, I have evidence to prove the boating accident was an assassination," he said into another phone.

"I discovered a hidden account in the Cayman Islands. Look at the deposit records and the amount of the ransom. The dates, times, and amounts match up. The account belongs to-"

As he picked up yet another new cell phone between his fingers, L spoke fluently in Italian, French, and English, working to resolve the unsolved cases compiled by Watari.

Every so often, L's hand reached instead for the sweets tower, and the smiling panda-shaped cookies made one final march before disappearing into L's mouth. With each case solved, L. tossed the case file along with a cell phone in a trash bin marked DONE.

"You're throwing those away?" asked Suruga. He was wearing an apron. Suruga had become a housekeeper of sorts since arriving at the Kira Investigation building and was cleaning L's suite.

"I won't be needing them anymore. Another L will take over in my place."

Suruga went back to being an agent for a moment and stared at L's curved back. Two days had passed since he infiltrated the Kira Investigation Headquarters. No one else had come or gone, and while this man appeared to be L, his occasional reference to "another L" bothered Suruga. Surely he didn't seem to be in contact with anyone else. A bluff? Or...Suruga crossed his arms and sighed, the truth eluding him.

Soon the piles of snacks and cell phones were gone. Only the cell phone marked "President of the United States" was spared the trash bin and stuffed in L's pocket.

I looked up mechanically. His face looked lost and unfocussed. L seemed put at a loss by the first free moment he'd had since the world had recognized him as a peerless and unrivaled detective.

L pressed a thumb to his mouth, like a child who lost his way, and stared down at his wristwatch. A watch with its glass face cracked and the time stopped at 7:05. A chime signaled the arrival of a new message. I turned to the computer-a calligraphic W was displayed on the screen. It was an email from Professor Nikaido.

Watari, take care of my daughter-

L stared at the short message for a moment. Then he glanced at the picture of Watari on the desk. "Is this to be my last job, Watari?"

Like a zombie out of an old horror movie, he thrust out both arms and left his fingers dangling. He walked across the room to another table with another pile, this one of open and idle laptop computers. Moving just his fingers, L operated several computers simultaneously. Professor Nikaido's past achievements, recent activi- ties, conference papers. A torrent of words rained down each of the screens, which L took in all at once. Then he got to work accessing the internal networks of the world's intelligence agencies. Using multiple servers as springboards, he exploited a vulnerability to enter each system, used a dummy password, counteracted a hacker trap with a mirror trap, and masked the source while eliminating any trace of unauthorized activity.

Biting his fingernails, L read every file marked TOP SECRET or CONFIDENTIAL.

"A new type of Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever in interior Congo...

antidote being developed...level four research facility in Japan..." From the information culled from multiple sources, L was able to determine Nikaido's current situation, the power of the enemy forces, and the likelihood that Nikaido was in trouble, and calculated the overall rate of danger.

"Eighty-three percent probability..."

His nail biting grew louder, actually echoing across the room. Suruga turned around, frightened by the noise, but with his pale face tinted red by the blinking lights on the screen, L continued to bite his nails as if the vibrations sent to his head helped him to think.

A warning alarm suddenly went off, and a shadow appeared on the camera monitoring the entrance. A girl holding a teddy bear stood at the door.

Maki Nikaido, age 10; nationality: Japanese; sex: female; daughter of Kimihiko Nikaido, distinguished professer at Wammy's House.

The information came up instantly on the facial recognition system. She was the same girl L. had encountered in Los Angeles. Evidently Watari had investigated her afterwards and uploaded the information into the system.

L deactivated the system and allowed the girl inside. As soon as he looked at her, L went straight to the point without bothering to ask who she was, "Watari isn't here. Has something happened to your father?"

Maki gave a startled look and began to cry where she stood.

"Hey, what's going on here?" Suruga ran to her side.

"It must have been hard. You were smart to come here," I said, ascertaining that his 83 percent probability had been on the mark. He bent down in front of the girl and offered her a special dango made from skewering five manju on a stick. "Sweets can help calm the nerves."!!!

Maki held tight to her teddy bear and shook her head. It took several moments for her to calm down.

"I suppose no one would suspect the safe would lead to a secret passage. So Professor Nikaido instructed you to take what was inside and run if anything happened to him. What is it that you took from the safe?" L asked.

Maki warily hid the teddy bear, her only possession, behind her back. "My father said to ask for a Mr. Watari's help. If you're not him, I can't trust you 100 percent just yet."

Far from getting angry at the girl who glared at him, L nodded in approval and said, "A correct response. If you have something to protect, you should only give it to someone you trust. The way your father entrusted it to you."

"So where is Mr. Watari?"

"Watari isn't here." "When will he be back?"

"He isn't coming back."

Maki looked to Suruga for help.

Sensing L's reluctance to reveal the truth himself, Suruga answered instead. "Maki, Watari suffered the same fate as your father. He was killed by some bad people."

"What...?" Maki couldn't help but stare at L., who jumped onto the sofa and turned his back, biting his nails.

"I am the one who killed Watari. If I hadn't failed, he would still..." L's slouch grew rounder as he sat on the sofa with his knees tucked tightly against his chest. He looked like a child who didn't know what to do with arms and legs that had grown too long. To Maki, he seemed to be burdened by the weight of something very heavy that she could not see.