Tokyo: Rabbit Officer and Her Evil Partner
Chapter 99 - 21 Werewolf Kill

Chapter 99: Chapter 21 Werewolf Kill

Kazama Tatsuya, of course, wouldn’t agree to such a bet. He’s not the chief; how could he have the authority to give his subordinates time off? Just not making Fushimi Roku work overtime would be good!

From a senior’s standpoint, Kazama Tatsuya felt he had a responsibility to say a couple of words.

It’s not to criticize or educate Fushimi Roku, because even if he scolded him until the dogs barked, it wouldn’t mean anything now. Kazama Tatsuya planned to guide him on ’how to properly investigate a murder scene’... Although he’s not great at collecting evidence, he does have the ability to reconstruct a scene.

"Who’s in charge of this case? I’m the lead. How the case is investigated is up to me!"

Fushimi Roku had never seen Yamaguchi Takashi making things difficult for Minamoto Tamako, but as they say, all crows under the sun are black. He retorted with full confidence, then switched his tone and said, "If you’re willing to cover my shifts for a month, it’s not that I can’t let you assist in solving the case."

Kazama Tatsuya initially wanted to refuse, but Fushimi Roku coaxed him thoroughly. Anyway, before he and Minamoto Tamako came, it was always Kazama Tatsuya and Watanabe Shun responsible for patrolling—looking at it positively, didn’t they just get an extra Minamoto Tamako as workforce?

"Alright then."

Kazama Tatsuya reluctantly agreed, then asked Fushimi Roku how he planned to investigate. Leaving aside the identity of the deceased and external pressures, the case itself was rather odd—how did the murderer manage to poison under the watchful eyes of so many?

According to his thinking, the first step should be to observe the poisoning symptoms on the corpse and roughly deduce the type of poison. Then strive to reconstruct the scene, without ruling out the possibility that the woman in the kimono might have poisoned beforehand...

"Not investigating," Fushimi Roku said.

"Investigate what?" Kazama Tatsuya genuinely didn’t understand.

"Literally, investigate nothing," Fushimi Roku folded his arms, spoke seriously with a hint of nonsense: "This is my original ’Fushimi Investigative Method,’ capturing the killer’s ’killing aura’ through spiritual perception..."

"What nonsense are you spouting?" Kazama Tatsuya interrupted.

Fushimi Roku sighed, thinking this world is one big Minamoto Tamako. He, the great detective Fushimi, had a hard time investigating personally, and yet a clueless baka just had to muddle things up.

"Then let me ask you, since we can’t leave the room, how are we supposed to collect evidence from the scene? Even if you deduce the key evidence and find the murder weapon, how will you prove that the weapon is the murder weapon?"

Fushimi Roku spread his arms: "There’s no identification officer here. Even if you find the murderer’s fingerprints, who can prove the fingerprints come from the same person? Folks in the Yakuza don’t get these things. If you say the fingerprints match, will they believe you?"

Kazama Tatsuya vaguely picked up on his meaning.

"This isn’t about solving a case; it’s like playing Werewolf together... Don’t ask me what Werewolf means; I can’t be bothered to explain."

Fushimi Roku paused, leaned his head closer to the gap in the screen, and observed the ’suspects’ under the candlelight before continuing: "That bald head is the judge. The rest of the Inakawa Association’s cadres are the suspects and the jury."

"There are a thousand truths among a thousand people, but only one fact. A detective’s work is to investigate ’facts,’ whereas a lawyer’s job is to pick the version of truth most favorable to their client among those thousand truths and use it to persuade the judge and jury, turning it into an established fact in the eyes of the law."

"Now do you understand? Even if you put the ’facts’ in front of them, they won’t believe it. We can only listen to everyone’s ideas and fabricate a ’truth’ that everyone accepts, like in Werewolf, where players vote someone out. As for who the real culprit is, that’s entirely irrelevant."

Kazama Tatsuya thought about saying this was utter BS, but after pondering a bit, he realized that was indeed the reality at hand.

If Minamoto Tamako were here, she’d definitely stop at nothing to find the fair ’facts,’ and she could achieve it with her excellent reasoning ability... Kazama Tatsuya finally understood why Minamoto Tamako always stuck close to Fushimi Roku.

"According to your theory, doesn’t everything just return to the original point? Those Yakuza are surely united in believing we are the murderers..."

"That’s because you’re not good at storytelling," Fushimi Roku withdrew his gaze and sat upright: "A true master can manipulate the truth at will."

This sentence was like a flash of lightning, exploding in Kazama Tatsuya’s mind.

He suddenly recalled the initial Heavenly Punishment case, from the death of Nagono Kawai to the elusive evidence, and finally, the local newspaper publishing the ’truth’—perhaps his intuition had never been wrong.

"What kind of look is that? It’s just one month of covering a shift!"

Fushimi Roku noticed he might have talked too much, so he immediately mixed things up while starting an evil chant: "After all, I’m risking my life to come investigate to save Senior Watanabe. I thought you and I would be in the same boat, didn’t expect you’d see me this way... Can this society still be decent? How can we survive, we mere patrol police, to satisfy you?"

Kazama Tatsuya had higher magic immunity than Minamoto Tamako; using the same trick twice on him wouldn’t work and instead only made him more suspicious. His expression seemed to say, ’I’ll just quietly watch your performance’, making Fushimi Roku uncomfortable all over.

Fushimi Roku cleared his throat, awkwardly changed the topic: "Since there’s no objection, let’s prepare to start the interrogation. You don’t need to speak, just take notes on the side."

"I didn’t bring a pen," Kazama Tatsuya said.

"No pen? How could a police officer not bring a pen? That’s like a soldier going to war without a gun... Never mind, I won’t say more, you should reflect on this yourself."

Fushimi Roku got pen and paper from the bald guy and formally started the interrogation.

His second interrogation target was the young man who was shouting the loudest. Before the young man even sat down, he started picking faults: "Are you two in cahoots?"

"He’s just helping me take notes. All conversations during the interrogation will be recorded, and both parties will verify and sign them," Fushimi Roku gestured with a smile, "Please have a seat."

"How can I be sure you won’t tamper with the notes?" The young man sat cross-legged.

"There will be two copies. After the interrogation, you can take one with you," Fushimi Roku replied.

The young man sneered, showing disdain, but finally said nothing more. Fushimi Roku sat up straight, put his hands on the table, and said calmly, "Well, let’s start the interrogation now... Please, suspect, introduce yourself."

"Suspect? Are you saying I killed my father? You, this guy—"

Fushimi Roku turned: "Note down, suspect is emotionally agitated and refuses to answer."

"Hey! What are you writing? You punk... I’m Inakawa Yuuhi, is that okay?" He glared: "Stop scribbling nonsense on your crappy paper!!"

Fushimi Roku responded with a smile: "Don’t worry, didn’t I just say? The notes will be verified by both parties at the end. If you feel any part is biased, we can discuss editing some unimportant details!"

"That’s more like it." Inakawa Yuuhi snorted.

Kazama Tatsuya scribbled on the paper. Even he could tell that the ’Young Master’ of the Inakawa Association was a rather simple-minded individual and might serve as a breakthrough point to extract valuable information.