The house of the late Takuo Shibuimaru was a tomb of quiet, suburban horror. Under the guise of a freelance journalist, Connor was the first of the consultants to arrive, his press pass granting him access beyond the police tape. The scene within was a carefully constructed nightmare. The officer was seated at his dining room table, slumped over, a pool of blood congealing around him. His right hand was frozen in a bloody scrawl on the polished wood.
Connor's impassive face betrayed nothing, but internally, his processors were working at maximum capacity. He scanned every surface, his optical units registering details invisible to the human eye: the precise spatter pattern of the blood, the temperature of the room, the faint traces of an unidentifiable particulate matter near the broken window.
Then, he began the reconstruction.
To the bewildered Japanese officers watching him, it simply looked as if the strange journalist was standing unnaturally still in the centre of the room, his head tilting in minute, jerky movements. But in his mind's eye, a yellow, wireframe world was being built over reality. He saw the window shatter inwards. He saw a figure move with a speed that was biomechanically impossible, landing without a sound. He saw the terrified officer forced into the chair. The simulation played and replayed, correcting itself with each new piece of data. It was in the analysis of the particulate matter that he found his first great discovery. The substance was carbon-based, yet its decay rate and composition matched nothing in any geological or chemical database on Earth. It was, for all intents and purposes, alien.
Next to arrive were Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings, posing as somber officials from the Belgian Embassy. While Hastings looked on with a grim expression, Poirot's attention was not on the grisly tableau of the murder itself. His eyes scanned the room, looking for a break in the pattern, a signature of the mind behind the crime. He found it on the table. Amidst the blood and chaos sat a pristine, untouched fruit bowl. It was perfectly arranged, a pyramid of oranges and pears. But at its very apex, placed dead centre with an obsessive, mathematical precision, was a single, flawless, ruby-red apple. It was so perfect it looked artificial. It was a point of absolute order in a maelstrom of violent disorder. Poirot's eyes narrowed. This was not random. This was a fixation.
An hour later, Mr. Sigerson and Dr. Fell—Holmes and Watson in their Scotland Yard disguises—were granted access. Watson, ever the physician, went straight to the body, confirming what the coroner had already noted. But Holmes, with a small, powerful magnifying glass, knelt by the bloody scrawl on the table. The local police had dismissed it as a meaningless smear, the last throes of a dying man. Holmes saw otherwise.
"The penmanship is forced, Watson," he murmured, his eyes alight with fierce concentration. "The victim was made to write this. But look here… the pressure on the final stroke. His muscles gave out. The killer was torturing him, but his biological functions failed before the message was complete." He traced the bloody letters with a gloved finger. "S-H-I-N... I-G-A-M-I... L-O-V... A-P-P-L-E…" He paused. "The final stroke is an upward curve, the beginning of an S. The word he was being forced to write was undoubtedly the plural: apples."
Finally, as the evening began to draw in, a slim, dark-haired young man in a rumpled jacket arrived. He introduced himself to the officer at the door as Ryuzaki, an old friend of Shibuimaru's son. His posture was strange, hunched and awkward, but his eyes missed nothing.
The moment L stepped over the threshold, it hit him. A wave of déjà vu so powerful it almost made him stagger. The air was thick with more than just the scent of blood. There was a dry, dusty smell, like ancient bone and forgotten things. The very atmosphere of the room felt… tainted. Corrupted. It was a feeling he could not name, but one his very soul seemed to recognize with a deep, primal dread. This was the feeling of a room a god of death had just left.
This overwhelming sensation guided him. While the others had focused on the bloody stage, his instincts pulled him towards the mundane. The officer's home office was untouched, but the computer monitor was in sleep mode. L sat in the chair, his feet tucked up under him, and touched the mousepad. The screen flickered to life. There, still open, was the officer's last web search, conducted just minutes before the estimated time of death.
"Shinigami legends." "Shinigami descriptions." "Can Shinigami be seen?"
Back in the hotel suite, the mood was electric. The pieces of the puzzle lay scattered on the table, and one by one, the detectives began to assemble them. Miss Marple sat silently in her chair, a small, knowing smile on her face as she listened.
Connor began. "The killer is not entirely human, or possesses technology that allows him to defy human biomechanics. He also left behind a particulate substance of non-terrestrial origin. A physical anomaly."
Poirot went next. "Our man B.B., he has a mind of profound obsession. In the centre of his violent theatre, he placed an object of perfect worship: an apple. He does not just like this fruit; there is a passion there. One might even call it love."
Holmes followed, his voice sharp with certainty. "The bloody message was not gibberish. It was a dictated, unfinished sentence. The final, missing word was 'apples'."
Finally, it was L's turn. He looked at the others, his dark eyes seeming to see through them. "You have found the physical evidence and the psychological tells. I found the context." He turned his laptop around, displaying a picture of Officer Shibuimaru's search history. "B.B. did not just kill him. He made the officer understand what was killing him. He was forcing his victim to write a message about his very nature."
L looked from Connor's anomalous dust, to Poirot's object of obsession, to Holmes's final word, and connected it to his own discovery. The separate clues, when laid end to end, formed a single, impossible, terrifying sentence. A message left not for the police, but for them.
"Shinigamis," L said, his voice barely a whisper. "The dust belongs to a Shinigami."
He pointed to Poirot's finding. "They have a great fondness… a love, even…"
He looked at Holmes. "…for apples."
The room fell silent as the final, chilling message clicked into place.
Shinigamis love apples…