“Really? That makes sense,” L said, sounding impressed.
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Genuinely impressed, not just saying so.
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“Your description makes it sound interesting. If I have time, I will have to look at some videos... but however confident you are, if they have a gun, or outnumber you, the situation changes. Take all the precautions you can.”
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“Of course. Don’t worry, I always do. Um, L?” Misora said at last.
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‘What is it, Naomi Misora?”
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“I was wondering... you’ve figured out what the killer’s goal is, right?”
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“…Yes,” he said, after a long pause.
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Misora nodded. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so sure when the fourth murder would occur. But he had told her to figure the reason out for herself. Which meant he had enough information to identify the killer now? Just as this thought crossed Misora’s mind, L destroyed her chain of thought with a single phrase.
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“To tell the truth, I always knew who the killer was.”
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“...Eh?”
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“The killer…” L said, “…is B.”
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We were raised at Wammy’s House in England, in Winchester, as L’s successors, as L’s alternatives, but that does not mean we knew anything more about L than anybody else. Including myself, only a few of us ever met L as L, and even I know nothing about L before he met Watari—Quillish Wammy, the genius inventor who founded Wammy’s House. Nobody knows what’s going on in L’s head. But even so, I know how Watari felt. Looking at L’s incredible talents from the perspective of an inventor—of course he wanted to make a copy, of course he wanted to create a backup. Anyone would feel the same.
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As I have already explained, L never appeared in public. L knew that his own death would increase the crime rate all over the world by a few dozen percentage points. But what if they could copy him? What if they could make a backup?
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That was us.
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L’s children, gathered from all corners of the world.
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Children gathered together, never told each other’s names.
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But even for a genius like Watari, creating a fake L was easier said than done. Even for Near and I, who were said to be the closest to L. . . the more we tried to be like him, the closer we got, the farther away he was, like chasing a mirage. So I hardly need to tell you what it was like when Wammy’s House was first founded, when he was still experimenting. The first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life, and the second child, Beyond Birthday, was brilliant and deviant.
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B stood for Backup.
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But B tried to surpass L, not become him... no, that might not be right. I have no way of knowing the inner workings of his mind. He... their generation was not like the fourth generation, with Near and I, all the children bound only to the one with the serial L. They were prototypes, never even given the L
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code, expected to fail. I prefer to refrain from idle speculation based on my own experiences, but, well, Beyond Birthday may have thought something like this:
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As long as there was L, B would never be L. As long as the original existed, the copy was always a copy.
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The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.
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L.A.B.B.—L is After Beyond Birthday.
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This reading is why I think this name is so much closer to the killer’s intentions than the Wara Ningyo Murders, or the Los Angeles Serial Locked Room Killings. I wasn’t talking about the names on a purely stylistic basis. Whether Beyond Birthday had put that much thought into it I have no idea, but if he had a specific reason for choosing to commit his murders in L.A., then that is probably why. I am sure he had a much more personal obsession with L as an individual than Near or I ever did. I can understand why someone would become a criminal in order to fight against a detective, which is why I can write about it like this, but even so. What did he hope to accomplish by killing unrelated people?
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Or perhaps B simply wanted to meet L. Then he could use the eyes of the shinigami he’d been born with and see L’s real name, see when L would die. He would be able to find out who L was. Beyond Birthday had never told anyone that he had the eyes of a shinigami, and it would not surprise me at all if he believed himself to be some kind of shinigami.
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So this all boiled down to a strangely shaped battle of detection between L and B. It was not exactly the same as the detective wars L had waged with Eraldo Coil and Danueve, but just as the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder.
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From this perspective, this was nothing but a detective war.
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Beyond Birthday challenged L.
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And L accepted the challenge.
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To put it bluntly, the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases were nothing but an internal struggle, a civil war within our home, sweet home— Wammy’s I-Inuse Unfortunate for the victims that got mixed up in it, but even if Beyond Birthday had not killed them, all those victims were fated to die that day, at that time, for some other reason, so logically and morally, their deaths were unavoidable. So in the strictest sense of the word, the only one who really got mixed up in their war was Naomi Misora.
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“Mmm… mm... mm-hmm-hmm hmmm... mm, mm, mm... Zo zo zo zo... no, that’s a horrible laugh...
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henh henh henh.”
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He was ready now.
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He cracked his neck...
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And Beyond Birthday began to move.
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Ryuzaki finally reached the townhouse where the third murder had occurred at just past three.
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“Sorry to keep you waiting, Misora,” he said, not appearing the least hit guilty about showing up an hour late.
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“Don’t worry, I wasn’t waiting. I started without you,” Misora said, as sarcastically as possible.
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‘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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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“Did you already check the bathroom, Misora?”
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“Of course. You?”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.
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“I don’t think there’s anything here,” she said. “I went over it pretty carefully.”
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“My, my. I never thought I’d hear you be so pessimistic, Misora.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”