Ch.75Request Log #009 – How to Wash Away Sins (3)

New York was a city full of sinners by his standards. To track him down, I needed to understand what criteria he was using for his hunt.

The Rat-Catcher… no, the Hanger of New York seemed to have started killing today and was diligently continuing his work. A diligent murderer deserved an equally diligent pursuer.

“Call his house again. Don’t tell his wife what’s happening, but find out what newspapers he subscribed to and what radio programs he listened to regularly. I shouldn’t have to work alone now that I’ve come this far.”

People need information to act. He started moving because he discovered something. I just hoped it wasn’t some deeply personal and secret notebook hidden somewhere in his house.

If it was newspapers, things would be simpler, but if it was radio programs, I’d have to ask Levi. Her cafe always had the radio on. Surely she didn’t play radio dramas all day.

The Professor, who had been watching me determine my next steps with apparent reluctance, spoke up. He was trying to establish safeguards.

“Of course I should help with that much. But make me one promise.”

“Don’t tell me not to handle it. You know this isn’t something we can just gloss over.”

I pulled a rifle from my duffel bag and pointed the barrel toward the ceiling as I looked at him. His eyes, seemingly refusing to make a decision, looked pitiful.

“I wasn’t going to… ask for that. I wouldn’t. Just, before you kill him, ask him why he did it. We need to know why a family man would do something like this.”

“Right, always the same.”

I had to do the killing alone. Many comrades would say the Hanger of New York needed to be dealt with, but I was the only one who could do the job. My hands would shake, and it wasn’t hard to imagine how my comrades would feel.

Was Yehoel still at the Divine State Hotel? The wealthy northern Manhattan neighborhood wasn’t Yehoel’s jurisdiction. Since it wasn’t far from the hall, I left as soon as I confirmed the Professor was heading for the telephone.

Changing the order of who helps whom happens occasionally. Sometimes I’d hand over people I was chasing to Yehoel if the police were after them too, and sometimes he’d hand over criminals to me if my clients were also after them.

There were even more onlookers because of the incident reported earlier. I took a wide detour to approach from behind the hotel, told the angel guarding the alley beside the hotel that I was here to see Yehoel, and went inside.

Yehoel, who had been slumped across two chairs in the hotel, stood up when he saw me enter. With an expression like he’d just met a savior, he closed his burning eyes and smiled at me.

“Got anything, Michael? I mean, the method of entry is strange to begin with. They say the lobby was never empty, but no one saw anything…”

“He must have jumped up to the lowered fire escape and climbed up that way. I don’t know why he did it yet, but I know who did it. Can you switch assignments with me?”

Yehoel, who was about to say something like “how could a person possibly,” looked me up and down and seemed to finally understand what was happening. He nodded with his usual smirk.

“Another comrade issue? This seems too big to just convince him to go home and never do it again…”

“I’m going to handle it. Lend me one of those submachine guns the angels use. One drum with a hundred rounds and two thirty-round magazines.”

Only then did Yehoel’s burning eyes properly look at me. He was staring as if to confirm I was serious, though he must have known there was no joke in my words.

“Will you be alright? It seems like you want to handle this yourself because it’s someone you fought with in the Great War, but I could quietly take care of it if you just tell me where he is. You don’t doubt an angel’s skill, do you?”

Yehoel spoke while extending his right hand, crafted in gold, as if making a pledge. That hand, modeled after the mighty right hand of the God-President, was clearly stronger than ours.

My expression remained unchanged. Even if Yehoel vaguely suspected, he wasn’t one of us. I couldn’t leave this to him.

Yehoel, who had been staring at me, casually pulled out a document from inside his police uniform. He wrote “weapon loss” in the reason section of an already completed report with his burning finger, then put it back in his pocket.

My police connection was once again a messed-up angel. I didn’t mind this time, though.

“Ah, comrade or not, there’s likely to be quite a bounty on this guy, so fifty-fifty…”

“The usual split: 80% for the catcher, 20% for the informant. Don’t cross the line.”

After I recited our usual ratio, Yehoel tapped his chest and grinned again.

“After I’ve shown such goodwill, you tell me not to cross the line? 60-40.”

“Fine, 70-30.”

“Not bad. Alright, 70-30. But you’re buying the drinks.”

Yehoel treating him as a wanted criminal was probably his own form of consideration. This angel might lack ability, but he had a good personality. I nodded slightly.

He handed me the police submachine gun he had brought. The deal was completed when he gave me two magazines he had prepared plus a thick drum magazine. It was just the right size for the duffel bag I had left my useless shotgun out of.

We completed the transaction cleanly. More than half of the angel police were mechanical angels, and Yehoel’s superior was someone I knew anyway, so it would work out somehow.

With the new gun in hand, I returned to the veterans’ hall. The Professor was waiting.

“I got extra weapons and finished talking with the police. What information do you have?”

“He apparently had a newspaper he read regularly. Actually, not the whole newspaper, just one editorial column… The newspaper itself is nothing special, just a small one. The column was called ‘I Accuse.’ Can you guess what made him angry? I heard that column stopped appearing a few issues ago, and he was extremely outraged about it.”

I bit my lip. People who think they’ve been corrupted either become obsessed with justice or completely reject it. He seemed to be the obsessive type.

“It would be good if he kept some kind of scrapbook. Even for me, it would take a few more days to search through libraries.”

“His obsession seems to have been quite severe. He apparently made a scrapbook. His wife said she’d get it for us. Here’s the address. And she seemed anxious. You’re good with words. Can you reassure her?”

I took the address the Professor handed me. It wasn’t quite a wealthy neighborhood, but it was an address in a fairly expensive single-family home area. He had a good life but threw everything away because he was blinded by justice.

Even if I reassured her, in a day or two she would hear that he was dead. Still… she would remember the Rat-Catcher, so I needed to come up with at least a temporary solution.

“She’s the Rat-Catcher’s wife. I’ll call her after I handle it. I have no intention of drinking memorial drinks, so if you want to do that, do it among yourselves.”

After drawing that line, I walked out. I got back in the car and headed to the address written on the note. Despite ten people having died, most of New York hadn’t deviated a step from their daily routines.

If it weren’t for the journalists taking pictures and onlookers around the crime scene, no one would have known who had died. I wanted a cigarette but held back since I was about to meet a comrade’s wife.

Soon I arrived at the residential area. White fence, evenly well-trimmed grass, exotic lanterns at the door, and a well-painted door—it was the kind of house anyone might dream of.

I had been here before. The door was open then. The Rat-Catcher had invited us to introduce his wife, but I arrived late due to work, only getting there when the inside was already bustling.

Feeling the past overlapping with the present, I approached the door and knocked. A voice from inside said, “Just a moment,” and soon a rather pregnant human came out.

It was the Rat-Catcher’s wife. Not the wife of the Hanger of New York. If he had been the Hanger of New York from the moment he left home, there would be no one to bring me the scrapbook.

Brown hair that reached down to her shoulder blades, innocent-looking eyes, and judging by her age, she was probably five or six years younger than her husband. Unlike the Rat-Catcher, who was quite large, she was rather small.

Her face somehow reminded me of Levi. To the Rat-Catcher, she must have been his Levi. Someone who reminded him of everyday life and made him live that everyday life. Why did he betray her? I wondered as I smiled.

“I’m Michael Husband. The Professor should have called you. The Rat-Catcher has been looking quite depressed lately, and we’re trying to see if there’s anything we can do to help.”

I made up an excuse. The suspicion about colleagues who had called asking about her husband when he wasn’t home disappeared, and a smile appeared on her face. She even let out a small laugh.

“That nickname is so cute every time I hear it. I can just imagine that big man setting traps all over the place to catch rats. Oh, here it is. Are you going to write a letter of protest to the newspaper in the name of the veterans’ association? I mean… ah.”

She seemed to have remembered my nickname. She rolled her eyes once and then looked at me with an embarrassed expression. She had apparently decided to call me by my name.

“Um, Mr. Michael. Yes, Mr. Michael.”

“You can call me by my nickname, it’s fine. We’re thinking of doing something like that. It would be nice if that column was back when your husband returns from his business trip.”

That won’t happen, I thought but didn’t say. Swallowing those words felt like swallowing a fish whole, bones and all. It had been a while since I’d felt so distant from my old friend, the lie.

After seeing the Rat-Catcher’s wife wave with a kind smile, I received the scrapbook and walked away. Sometimes even a detective pursuing a murderer could suffocate from bitterness.

Nevertheless, once back in the car, I opened the scrapbook. And the moment I read the first page, I understood what information he was using to commit murder.

Right on the first page was a story about a paper mill owner. The content was ordinary. It simply carried the story of a worker whose brother had died when the owner brought in hired thugs to suppress a strike.

From his perspective, I would be someone who deserved to be killed ten times over. I smirked and turned to the next page. It was about a wealthy household that completely replaced their employees because of poor work performance.

Again, there wasn’t enough reason to kill. The fired people would have no reason to speak well of the employer who fired them, and if they were fired abruptly, that would have created resentment.

But that wasn’t important. What I was chasing was a madman who firmly believed this list and was killing people. So instead of thinking about reasons, it was better to look at the next page.

The next was about a secret bar that was “polluting” New York. Fortunately… it wasn’t a place I knew. I was somewhat relieved that I wouldn’t have to worry about the bartender or Madam Brünhild.

It was a bar on Motherwood Street, but not one I knew. It had an elf bartender and was decorated like their homeland using elves’ unique magic to grow trees. From the content, it seemed the writer had submitted this article out of resentment after being kicked out of the bar rather than disliking the bar itself.

Obsession with justice blinds the eyes. No, all obsessions blind the eyes. But to avoid being blinded by anything, one would have to close their eyes completely. In the end, the eyes are still blinded.

After starting the car, I drove straight to that bar. If such an article had been published, the prohibition squad would have raided and turned the place upside down.

If enough time had passed, they would have reopened, and if not, they would remain closed. The latter would make things easier.

Once again, I passed through America’s World Tree and entered Motherwood. True to its name, the smell of the city’s smog seemed to lessen a bit around that oak tree.

But that was only momentary. By the time I parked in front of the bar, I was back in the air filled with New York’s acrid scent.

Despite being in front of a bar, there was no commotion. Had he already been here? I took the submachine gun from my duffel bag, hid it under my coat, and entered the bar that didn’t even have a doorman.

Yes, he had already been here. The bartender was hanging from a shelf above the bar, and the large orc doorman had been stabbed to death right in front of the door. All the customers, about ten people who had filled the seats, were also dead.

The weapon was a knife again. I examined the wounds on the orc’s body. Judging by the wounds… the blade seemed to be at least a hand span long. And if the stab wounds were deep… yes, it was a trench knife.

Usually, we used clubs, but the Rat-Catcher preferred blades. He said he didn’t like blood and filth splattering when hitting rats, or something like that. Even as the Hanger of New York, he still favored his trench knife.

I approached the bodies of customers gathered at the back door, as if they had tried to escape that way. It looked like they had been killed by being forcefully slammed against the door. I could only confirm again that it was one of us who did this.

Before calling the police, I approached the bartender’s body. This time, the bar wasn’t high enough for his neck to break, so his expression was terrible, as if he had died from suffocation.

A shotgun had fallen to the floor, but a 20-gauge shotgun wouldn’t have even properly scratched our bodies. It was a waste of effort. I took out the scrapbook from my pocket and turned to the next page.

The next destination was about a construction company representative who hadn’t paid any compensation to a dead construction worker. I didn’t judge. I didn’t think. I just chased across New York.

A dance club tout approached my briefly stopped car and started talking about what great girls they had ready, so I slightly lifted my coat to show the submachine gun, and he ran away.

The sign of a theater showing a story about a projectionist becoming a detective in his dreams glowed white. People with expressions that seemed confused about the new film walked out. I passed by.

I arrived at the construction site address. It would have been a construction site when the article was written, but now it was a decent five-story building. Screams could be heard from inside.

The sound of a person squeezing out a scream from their gut has a unique feeling. After checking the submachine gun in my pocket once more, I rushed inside. The main entrance’s lock had already been completely smashed.

The smell of blood was thick from the doorway. A woman who looked like a secretary who had collapsed approaching the door was dead with her eyes still open. Instead of closing her eyes, I pulled out the submachine gun from my pocket and rushed into the building.

Swallowing the urge to open fire as soon as I saw him, I called out his nickname first, as the Professor had asked.

“Rat-Catcher! Are you here? Come down if you are!”

The screams I had faintly heard from outside the building subsided. Heavy footsteps echoed, and a familiar face came down from the stairs on the second floor.

A human with brown hair, blue eyes, and standing at least six feet tall came down and smiled at me. It was the Hanger of New York. Not the Rat-Catcher. Absolutely not.

“So… Mongrel, right. That was your nickname, wasn’t it?”

With what looked like a trench knife with brass knuckles connected to the blade in his hand, he smiled at me pleasantly as if he hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of.

He’s more of a fanatic than a vigilante. He believes he’s doing the right thing, and he thinks others will sympathize with his righteous actions, which is why he can be so confident.