Cop Craft – Dragnet Mirage Reloaded

The group of four got in the elevator, and when they got off on the first floor, they passed each other with a young man. He was wearing a New York Yankees hoodie that covered his eyes, so they didn’t get a good look at his face.

On their way to the car, O’Neill started complaining with no hesitation

「Goodness gracious, you just blamed me for everything! That man’s underling just pointed his very illegal fully automatic weapon at me, an unarmed, unresisting civilian,he was clearly doing it with murderous intent, right? Aren’t you supposed to get paid precisely to protect upstanding citizens from dangerous crises like that? I’m constantly getting annoyed by your methods」 「Well what could I do? If I had left it up to you, then the negotiation that took place would’ve been doomed anyways」 「Impossible! After I introduced you with such passionate devotion to him. Did it not occur to you that I could’ve just shouted that you were a detective?!」 「If you had done that then I would’ve beaten you to a pulp」 「That’s it! Brother Kenny! Did you hear that?!」 「That’s awful, sir. Well, it’s not like I don’t get it, but…」

Kenny grumbled

「Right? There is no way that I was going to check whether this guy’s plans were going to work. If I had left it all to him, we would’ve ended up with a few holes in our bodies at best, and like a swiss cheese at worst」 「How deplorable! Do you not know piety at all?! Even in dealings as filled with immorality as that, the unseen hand of god is always present and moving. That atheist way of thinking is the authoritarian like enlightenment that is rotting today’s people from within, like-」 「Shut up. Do you want me to send you back to prison?」 「Oh no that again! Oh Lord, please forgive this man!」

Tilarna was just there quietly right by O’Neill’s side as he sighed. Matoba noticed and he asked her about it as he was opening the car door

「What happened?」 「Hm…」

She answered vaguely, and got on the passenger seat. O’Neill and Kenny went off muttering among themselves to their own car – a one box vehicle with an exaggerated James Brown portrait painted on it – and drove off.

~o~

A short while later, just as Matoba was about to start the car, Tilarna finally opened her mouth

「Kei. We passed by a man back there as we exited the elevator, remember?」 「Yeah」 「That was Nyath Maybell. From high school」 「What?!」 「I have no doubts about it. I don’t think he noticed me, but…」

It was all full of completely illogical things from the very beginning, with Nyath’s out of place appearance Tilarna was just getting more and more confused.

Why him? And why was he in a place like that?

Matoba was wondering whether it was just someone else, but that was unlikely. She had just had a fight with him a few hours earlier, so there was no way she would mistake him with someone else.

「Thinking about it, normally…」

Said Matoba shyly, as he turned moved the car to a spot where they could observe the entrance to Mendoza’s building

「… Mendoza talked about a “well behaved young kid”, so wouldn’t that be Nyath? That would be the logical conclusion」 「Absolutely not」

Tilarna denied it immediately.

「How can you be so sure?」 「Nyath is not that type of person. His personality is quiet, and he almost doesn’t have any friends in school. If you’re going to start selling drugs, then you probably need some customers, right? It’s not him」 「So there’s no possibility that he’s just acting like that? If the guy is well aware of his surroundings, then he will avoid standing out and instead have someone do the business for him as a proxy」 「Well that’s…」

Tilarna had no words.

She had taken a liking to him, but it’s not like she knew Nyath very well either. She only talked with him on the way home from school, so there was no way she actually knew what he was doing at night.

「Well, just by looking at his database record, there was absolutely nothing suspicious about him. He’s just a hard working high school student」 「Record? Did you look Nyath up?」 「Don’t look at me like that. I just looked him up to know about him, since you were talking to him so much」 「I- It’s not like I’m talking that much to him」 「But you were. Every day…. look, this is his record」 Matoba extended his hand with the portable terminal, and she took it with an awkward feeling. The screen, which had turned yellow from all the tobacco resin, was displaying his extremely short profile.

「That’s it?」 「That’s it. I also looked up his adoptive parents, the Maybells, but they were also spotless. Well we need to get to it and look into it. We can’t say anything just yet…」 「It’s just as his record says. It’s not him.」

Tilarna returned the terminal

「In that case, how do you explain this situation right now? It’s not like he’s here as a tutor or something for the Mendoza household. This is not the kind of place a spotless underage kid visits」 「I don’t know」 「Ah if only we had a long distance mic. We could perhaps point it towards his apartment and eavesdrop on their conversation」 「A device like that exists? Let’s use it!」 「I don’t have one. Besides, you need to get legal permission to be able to use it」 「That “fundamental human rights” god at it again, huh?」

She said with a worn out tone, as Matoba exhaled.

「Well even you eventually got to understand it! Anyways, if Nyath came out, I was thinking that we couldn’t just go up to him and restrain him on the spot」 「We can’t?」

Tilarna was half thinking about it seriously, so she opened her eyes wide. Matoba sighed exasperated.

「Here’s the thing. You’re undercover, remember? What kind of idiot would just go around showing themselves and risking being-?」

Right at that moment, a part of the apartment building exploded, and his words were cut short. The fumes from the explosion were raging together with the violent attack that came from an apartment on the fifth floor. Almost at the same time, the glass windows of all the surrounding buildings shattered, and even their car that was parked on a separate street started swaying from side to side, and some of the glass splinters came flying their way, landing on the roof of their car.

「Wha-…!」

Immediately, the two of them that were hiding below the dashboard, raised their heads timidly and looked up astonished at the gigantic body of flames and black smoke that were rising towards the night sky.

「Is that Mendoza’s apartment…?」 「Obviously」

Matoba recovered himself from his daze quickly and turned on his wireless earphone

「V21 to HQ! We have a code 21 at an apartment complex in Corinthos! The address is Mayroad number… ah… one three nine one! I repeat, an apartment complex in Corinthos… no, it’s not all of it, as far as I can tell it’s only the fifth floor. It’s an emergency, call the firefighters and a few ambulances as well… no, I don’t know yet. It just happened. In any case, send them over quick!」

A lot of screaming and yelling was flying around all over the place. Matoba cut off his communication, and started cursing at the sight of the destroyed hood of his car.

「Nyath…」

Tilarna mindlessly got out of the car and only looked at the flames rising from the apartment.

~o~

They were made to wait two hours inside the car until the drenched firefighters at the scene extinguished the fire and told them to come in.

Within those two hours, the head of the seventh department, and the head of the crime prevention department argued intensely about whose responsibility this was, and the firefighting office’s investigation team and the forensics team were talking all over about crime scene preservation, as the police department supervisors were repeating the same useless. The ADF (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms) department investigators were offering information to the city’s insurance company representatives.

And the two of them stuck waiting inside the car spent the entire time arguing and throwing insults around.

~o~

In the end, along with the authorities’ reaction protocol, and all involved parties, the forensics team managed to carry on their scene preservation duties, and at last after establishing a minimum entrance zone, they let Matoba and the Special Vice Squad into what once was Mendoza’s apartment.

「I didn’t expect that. To think that these guys would be so nonchalant about this」

Water sprinklers kept spraying intensely. Matoba looked up at the ceiling, and complained

「Isn’t that typical of extreme bureaucracy and hierarchies? I wonder how they would be acting if this were some kind of modern violent terrorism or something」 「That’s easy with terrorism. The terror unit from the police department would immediately unify everything and take control of the area. With great gravity and imminent danger, a higher up would be granted a command right. It’s all defined in the protocol」

Said chief Zimmer as he opened his umbrella ready to go. Ultimately he too had been involved with the management problems, and ended up leaving to inform everybody of the police department headquarter’s intentions.

「Since this time drugs are involved, it’s all a mess… So, what do you think?」

Zimmer was constantly staring at the blackened, distorted spring mattress’s remains. There was no way Matoba even knew what actually happened. However

「It wasn’t an explosive」

Said Matoba

「These kinds of explosions usually result from gasoline vaporizing or something and then starting a fire. We even found the remains of an empty tank, so I’m pretty confident about it. I talked to the forensic guys earlier, and they held the same opinion」 「About how much are we talking about?」 「Gasoline? With a place this size, that would be about seven gallons. It’s an amount that a single guy could carry by himself.」 「I see. So in that case, it would be that high school kid that Exedilika saw who was carrying it within his bag?」

He asked Tilarna who was standing in a blackened corner, lost in thought. Her metamorphosis was already undone, and she was back to her usual golden hair, light skin appearance.

「…」 「Exedilika」 「? Yes, boss?」 「I was asking you. That Nyath Maybell or whatever was carrying enough explosive materials with him?」 「Well… I don’t think he was」

Tilarna answered devoid of energy. Matoba looked at Zimmer in the eye, and seconded her words.

「Mendoza is a drug dealer. He was probably saving some gasoline just in case he had to deal with the police or something. That sometimes happens, with his kind of people. When push comes to shove, they’ll use it to avoid having their merchandise confiscated upon their arrest, and instead just destroy it. No matter what, facing a fire is a lot more desirable to them than being sentenced for trafficking.」 「But there’s also no way that Mendoza just committed suicide with all that gasoline」 「Well yeah」

The bodies at the scene still hadn’t been subjected to an autopsy. Looking at them superficially, they didn’t seem to have any external wounds, but nothing could be said for certain at the time.

「Besides, Mendoza had a very rough bodyguard watching his back with a submachine gun. It didn’t have a suppressor or anything, and it’s quite a loud gun. However, neither me nor Tilarna heard the sound of a gun at all. I don’t think those guys would just be killed by any guy without putting up a fight」 「Maybe they were doused in gasoline suddenly, and didn’t even get a chance to do anything about it. And he could’ve started a fire with a lighter while they were still recovering from the shock, or something」 「But in that case, the culprit would have been caught in the explosion as well, and we would be looking at five bodies. We were only able to find four.」

Tilarna asked in return

「Four?」 「Mendoza and his three underlings. Four people in total. That Nyath kid you saw was not among them」 「His corpse?」 「There’s no corpse. None of them match his size」 「Ehya Narsdahme¹…」

Tilarna complained in Farbani.

1. What in the world…?

Can't wait to see more? Want to show your support? CLICK HERE to be a patron and get additional chapters ahead of time!