Ch.173Request Log #015 – Even a Single Drop of Blood Calls the Shark (8)

When I arrived, she was definitely alive, and since she was the condition of my deal, she should still be alive. I just hoped she wasn’t the meat that ended up in the soup.

There was a Second Dining Hall separate from the First Dining Hall, but fortunately, there wasn’t another ogre there. I had brought the dealer’s submachine gun, so it wouldn’t have mattered much if there had been.

The building was now completely empty. All the horrific acts committed under the grandiose name of the Ancient Gastronomy Society turned out to be merely the hobby of some rich chairman.

He should have chosen a healthier hobby. Dying because of a hobby was just as unwelcome as dying for work. I started going around the building, opening each locked door one by one.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience. There were storerooms filled with dirty clothes and dusty personal effects, and rooms full of cookbooks I absolutely didn’t want to read. I felt like burning the building down.

I did the right thing killing them all. As I searched through the rooms, I finally reached one where I sensed someone’s presence. When I unlocked the door, there was a woman handcuffed inside. She looked fine except for a bandage wrapped around her thigh.

Since she would be wary of anyone coming in from outside, I just took out my wallet and tossed my business card to her. After watching her pick up the card, I said:

“Mr. Maurice Murphy sent me to find Julia. Do you remember the voice you heard through the chloride?”

Her face brightened when she heard my voice. She immediately started pouring out words.

“You’re the one who asked about the window frame, right? Oh, I knew Morris would find a way somehow… I’m, well. I’m physically fine. The first few days seemed comfortable, but after that… I starved.”

Her initially cheerful tone changed to an expression of nausea as she trailed off. She did seem to have been starving. The bowl prepared for her to eat from like a dog’s dish was still full.

She seemed a bit anxious at my silent observation. It appeared she had stopped eating after finding out what she had been eating.

“You’re, um, hired by Morris, so please don’t judge, no, I mean condemn me…”

It didn’t matter if she hadn’t willingly eaten it knowing what it was. It didn’t matter if she was just ashamed of having tasted it even once.

“I cared that those creatures ate people, but I don’t really care about someone like you who was forced to eat. Better to eat something and survive than starve to death. What’s the point of a noble death anyway?”

Though not meant as comfort, she looked comforted. People like us needed this kind of justification. It was about avoiding responsibility, but constantly facing responsibility isn’t always good.

I used an unusually small key from the key ring to unlock her handcuffs and ankle cuffs. When she tried to stand up forcefully, she collapsed again from the pain in her thigh.

It would be better to leave her to the police now. I lightly carried her out of the room and down to the counter. She didn’t seem surprised that there was no one else in the building.

I tapped the rat telephone I had placed on the counter chair.

“Call the police. I don’t know what happened, but it seems all the ogres have disappeared, so you crawled out—that’s what you should say. As for me, I was never here.”

“Won’t they be suspicious? Even if they are angels.”

They wouldn’t be suspicious. Yehoel would be able to deduce what had happened, and other angels would likely overlook it with the attitude that good is good.

There was no reason not to. The cannibals were long dead, and the only survivor was rescued in relatively good condition except for a small piece of flesh cut from her thigh.

If they needed a suspect, it would be the tailor who wasn’t here, and once they found him dead at his shop, they would label the case unsolved without much hesitation.

“Why would they need to? The perpetrators are all dead, the survivor has been rescued… All that’s left to do is express shock and mourn. Angels will take the quick and easy path.”

“So, is this just… the end? After being kidnapped for almost a week, trembling at the thought that I might be eaten here…”

Her expression showed she was a bit overwhelmed. You can only truly learn the value of something when you’ve nearly lost it. Well, either way, she was the winner in this situation.

All I did was arbitrarily kill the ogres and warlocks, but as a result of those actions, she would be the one going home and whispering words of love to her lover.

“Just make the call and it’ll be over. And I’ll be outside. Since I was never here, I can’t stay, but I need to see that the police take you properly so I can report back to my client. If anything happens, I’ll come back, so feel free to call me. I’ll be in the phone booth.”

Usually, the client ranked higher than the target of the request, but not this time. As I turned to leave the building, the woman named Julia grabbed my lapel.

“How on earth did you find me? Please don’t think I’m flirting. It’s just… I think I need more mental preparation to stay alone in this building.”

After being locked up alone for a week, she seemed to need more emotional stability to wait for the police by herself. I should ask for an additional fee.

“As for how I found you… Ah, the warlocks who kidnapped you left a drop of blood for their ritual. I found that. That led me from there to here.”

I didn’t mention that when I was stuck with a missing link, I blindly believed my colleague’s almost delusional suggestion, which allowed me to come here today and finish the job completely.

It was better for a detective to be exceptionally capable. If not, at least to appear so. Clients with illusions tended to hire us again, and having a banker as a regular client wasn’t bad.

She smiled a little at my words. The tension in her shoulders naturally relaxed as she laughed.

“That’s… Are you some kind of bloodhound? I have no idea how you found me. But I guess I just didn’t see you running around. Without even needing to try to unlock my handcuffs, I was just stubbornly making the only resistance I could, and then the door opened and I heard someone say they were from the Husband Detective Agency. I think that’s why.”

To be recognized for a detective’s efforts—I couldn’t tell if this was a good omen for how the world would turn. I pretended to be a bit humble.

“I’m satisfied with an envelope of money rather than thanks… But still, it’s nice to be recognized for the effort. I had a lot of help from coincidence in this case.”

I neither hid nor was ashamed of my greed. Money was a conversion of value. Expecting a lot of money meant that the client placed that much value on this woman.

She giggled and said something I quite liked.

“Still, it feels good and satisfying. Honestly, the thought I had most while being locked up was: why me? Why was I kidnapped? But now, I think the ogres who were here probably had the same thought. And now, I think I can answer that question. Both me and those ogres were just terribly unlucky. In the end, my luck was just a bit better.”

She naturally attributed it to luck. I didn’t deny it this time. Finding this place because of Yehoel’s nonsense and being able to massacre everyone was purely luck.

That brief conversation seemed more than enough to calm this woman named Julia. She sat in the counter chair and picked up the receiver with one hand. With the other hand, she waved goodbye.

I lightly touched the brim of my hat to return the greeting and left the building. Cars whose owners had now vanished filled the front of the building. I quickly ran across the street and stood in a phone booth.

After a short while, several police cars and flying angels arrived at the building. They helped the woman sitting at the counter into a police car, and the angels flung open the doors to the dining hall inside.

If human police had gone in, they would have vomited, and even the angel police—at least the non-archangels—covered their mouths as if nauseated. Now it was time to report to my client.

I immediately dialed my client’s number. The call connected after just one ring, and I heard the banker’s desperate voice.

“Do you have, um, any findings? If you’re calling at this hour to report…”

“I don’t think I’ll be coming in to report today. I’ve found Julia. The ogres were the culprits. They were part of the Ancient Gastronomy Society, trying to return to cannibalism, and well, for various reasons, they had kidnapped Julia. All the members of the society are dead, so there won’t be any further trouble… You’ll soon get a call from the police station on Julia’s behalf. Just take that call.”

He made a confused sound, not understanding what I was saying. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“No, what… The last I heard was that you had caught the warlocks, but, how on earth did you find her?”

I didn’t want to give the same explanation twice. I decided to gloss over it and discussed the payment.

“Julia will explain it to you. It’s quite a complicated story. Anyway, I handled it in two days, and Julia is fine except for a minor wound on her thigh. I think it would be better to receive a completion bonus rather than a daily rate this time. I won’t charge extra for the ones I killed, so feel free to set the amount comfortably.”

The banker became suspicious of the detective who naturally brought up payment. This was incomprehensible.

“I hope this isn’t some kind of low-grade prank, Detective.”

“After your busy day, you’ll regret those words, even if just a little. Let’s continue the payment discussion tomorrow. I’ll hang up now.”

It was better to gloss over things like this than to explain and re-explain everything here. At least, thanks to Julia, the target of the request, my mood had improved somewhat.

Originally, I would have had to investigate without any evidence until evening, but that need had completely disappeared. I took a taxi to the tailor shop where I had left my clothes and car.

I pushed open the door of the tailor shop where the ogres of the Ancient Gastronomy Society had hung an “Absent” sign. Wearing boots to avoid leaving shoe prints in the blood, I collected my clothes and put them in a waterproof bag.

I would need to burn them in a small waste incinerator at a warehouse by the dock. I had never felt satisfaction from carrying evidence of a murder case. Evidence was just something to be disposed of.

I returned home, washed off the remaining blood with hot water, and gathered the dealer’s suit I had stolen and the clothes I had worn, taking them to the warehouse by the dock. I threw them into a small waste incinerator and burned them.

I might be a suspect, but I wouldn’t be arrested. In fact, disposing of the trash seemed to take longer than dealing with the ogres.

That evening, I really did head to Eden with Yehoel. Since it was a summer suit, it was relatively bright in color. I think I wore a similar light brown suit the first time I went to Eden… I had a sense of déjà vu.

I didn’t even need to wait for Yehoel to finish work. Either he ignored quitting time and came early, or he performed some aerial acrobatics between New York’s buildings, because by the time I arrived on Fifth Avenue, I could see him spinning lightly between buildings, turning the corner and flying toward me.

The angel, larger and heavier than an ogre, skillfully extended and folded his wings repeatedly, landing as lightly as a feather. These beings could land this gently when needed.

Yehoel, whose flame in his left eye was slightly weaker than in his right, gave me what seemed like an incredulous smile. People around were listening, but he spoke as if it didn’t matter.

“Hey, they really were ogres? You’ve learned that trusting my instincts isn’t so bad, right?”

I always hated seeing Yehoel so confident. It was the most competent incompetent angel I knew pretending to be a truly competent angel.

“I thought there was no way your instinct could be right, so I went in with minimal preparation and almost got screwed. Anyway, I hope the Eden invitation properly brought Yehoel.”

“Oh, that’s harsh. Asshole. We’re friends, and you’re going to switch like that?”

Yet he confidently showed me Eden’s invitation from his wallet, which proudly, or perhaps irreverently, had the God-President’s dove spirit embedded in it. He continued to taunt me.

“Making jokes about subjects and objects is too harsh for an angel without the intelligence to understand them. Just guide me.”

That day, Yehoel and I emptied at least five bottles of that Etz Ha’Haim or whatever life tree liquor. I essentially blew in one night the amount of money I would receive for working for an archdemon.

It occurred to me that this was why I sometimes struggled with money despite working seven days a week. Still, the taste of the life tree liquor was good enough to make me forget such rational thoughts.

Drinking was always rational. I couldn’t fall asleep without pouring something down. Sleep was similar to ortolan—to swallow it, I had to drown it in alcohol. That was the extent of my purpose.

Five bottles of liquor couldn’t get me drunk, but at Eden, they provided a driver without charging extra. He was a human driver who was appropriately taciturn, skilled, and respectful, matching the amount of money being spent.

That day, I was able to return to my apartment sitting in the back seat of my car. If all jobs were like today’s, I might want to continue working as a detective a bit longer.

The only thing I didn’t like was having to listen to my client calling from early the next morning, repeatedly alternating between “I’m sorry” and “Thank you” hundreds of times.