Chapter 3 – Tokyo's First Zombie

He woke to a gentle nudge from the nurse. "Conan, time to wake up!" she said with way too much pep. "It's past noon, and the nice lady is here to pick you up." She nodded towards the door. The caseworker was standing there, a file stuffed full of paperwork clutched to her chest and two shopping bags dangling from her free hand. She tossed the bigger bag onto the bed, letting the contents spill over the covers. Second-hand clothes, it looked like, and a set of cheap, plain white underwear and socks.

"Do you need help changing?" the nurse asked.

He must have hesitated too long, because she shuffled over and spread the contents out. Two pairs of pants, two shirts, a sweater, and a black knit cap. He didn't know why he did it, but he grabbed the hat and gingerly pulled it over his bandaged head before putting on even the underwear.

"You like the hat?" the nurse giggled.

He didn't respond, and instead tore open the packaging for the underwear.

A few minutes of humiliating cooing from the nurse, and he was dressed, and she was gone. The social-worker lady was filling out paperwork, not paying attention to him. Bored, he crawled off the bed, and hobbled out of the room. The cuts on the bottoms of his feet made it slow going.

He didn't make it far. Benches lined the hallways so that people could sit and wait for their loved ones when they couldn't be in the room. He clambered with some difficulty onto the bench opposite his room's door. A discarded newspaper sat on the end of it. He pulled it to him. It was a disreputable tabloid, but the headline sent chills down his spine.

"Tokyo's First Zombie?! - Boy Crawled Out of Own Grave"

And a picture, obviously taken in the early daylight hours from a distance, of his own muddy handprint.

Heart-hammering in his chest, he unfolded the newspaper to read the rest of the article.

"At 2:30 AM, a small boy covered in dirt wandered into the pictured kouban and collapsed. Police sources say that the evidence suggests that the boy had been beaten unconscious and buried alive in a shallow grave, but awoke and crawled out of his own grave to find help."

Someone in the police-force was going to get reprimanded for that. Details about children involved in cases weren't supposed to be leaked. From the sounds of it, the culprit had been one of the patrolmen in the kouban. He recalled that one of them pointing out the dirt in his mouth before he passed out.

"There you are," snapped Mrs. Aono's harsh voice from above. She rested her hand on the collapsible wheel chair before her. "Don't wander off like that." She pointed sharply at the chair, then caught a glimpse of the newspaper he held. She snatched it out of his hands, ignoring his protests. "I need to make a phone call," she muttered. "You better be in this chair when I get back."

"Yes ma'am," he said in a small voice. Someone was definitely getting in trouble for that.

The seat of the chair and the bench were roughly at the same level. Instead of climbing down and having to climb up again, he pulled the chair over by its armrest and crawled onto the chair directly. It wasn't long before Mrs. Aono was back, muttering under her breath about vultures and snakes. Without addressing him, she trundled him out of the hospital to the street, where she hailed a taxi. The taxi driver hopped out and helped her move Conan into the back seat. The chair was packed into the trunk.

He noticed that she gave the address for the local police station as their destination, but a kid shouldn't be able to recognize that. Once they'd started driving, Conan asked, "Are we going to the place I'll be staying?"

She looked down at him from under her bifocals. "We'll be stopping by the police station first, so you can give an official statement, and, it's lunchtime soon. I'll find you something to eat while you're giving your statement."

Drowsiness, perhaps aided by the painkillers pressed on his eyelids, which he closed only a moment, and they had arrived. Not good. He needed his wits about him. The associates of the men who poisoned him likely had people in the police on their payroll, if they could observe their investigation of a death and take the corpse away to do their own experiments on there. They rolled past a set of desks - one of the desks had pillows comically piled high on its chair – and Mrs. Aono dropped him off in a brightly painted room, commanded him to stay put, and shuffled her way to the office of the youth division chief. Getting bored, Shinichi absorbed himself in memorizing every detail of the room. Then he closed his eyes, and recalled it.

A set of Barbie dolls had been lined up in a corner. Their hair was so ratty, it looked like they had been there for at least a decade. The back wall was almost entirely one-way glass disguised to look like a mirror. The other walls had a primary-colors mural of various jungle creatures standing around being friendly with each other. The monkey was offering the lion a banana. A creepy teddybear stared at him from across the room, its eyes strangely shiny for how old and beat up it was. Toy blocks overflowed from a plastic bin, one bright blue triangle and a yellow square that had paint so faded the wood-grain was visible. A piece of plywood, the kind used in countertops, with a hard coating that could be easily washed was arranged on the floor with a set of paper and crayons on top of it. They'd been expecting him. Why then, were they making him wait? The door was still open, and he could see the section chief's office door from where he sat. There was a painting by the door of a lily. He could hear the voices of two women inside the office, talking about what to do about the article. The division chief must be a woman then... was the painting of the lily meant for her? It must have not offended her if she let it stay up so long that it was growing cobwebs. Maybe it was there before she got there. There were three chairs –

"Hello!" a cheerful voice interrupted his meditation.

He blinked, and turned his tired eyes at the pest.

The voice belonged to a short guy with a round, childish face... a middle schooler? Wait, a small microphone was pinned to the underside of his collar. And his hands were scarred – burn scars? And the way he leaned over, careful of his side, another recent injury. And there were the calluses of someone who spent a lot of time practicing kendou. Now that he looked at it that way – this was probably a police officer. A young one, sure, but Shinichi could see now that he must be in his twenties, as he had the broadened chest that one gains from the last growth spurts of becoming an adult. Sure some teens matured early, but the desk with the chair raised up really high with pillows confirmed his deduction.

"Are you the detective that's supposed to talk to me?" he asked, glaring.

The guy grinned. "You can tell?"

"It's obvious. You're the police officer who belongs to that chair with the pillows. Do you always pretend to be a kid when talking to kids?"

The young officer bowed briefly. "Shibata Taketora, at your service!" He finished it with a salute.

"And Conan, at yours," he responded with as much of a bow as he could manage in the wheelchair.

Officer Shibata bent to pick up the plank of plywood. Shinichi could see his wrinkled brow in the large two-way mirror. The man balanced the plank across the armrests of his wheelchair. The officer sat down beside him, being sure to bring himself to Conan's eye-level. "Most people think that I'm a kid when they first meet me. Do you think I should change the way I introduce myself?"

"I bet most kids find you easier to talk to, because you look like one of us," Shinichi answered. "That's why they wanted you to talk to me, right? Because I couldn't tell Officer Satou anything." He looked down, and studied his second-hand sweatpants. They were a size too big for him, and the waist-band was rippled like a slice of well-cooked bacon from the drawstring being tied tighter than the pants were designed for. "What you did was a lie by omission. That's often wrong, but if it means kids are more comfortable talking to you, so you can do your job better, it's alright."

Whatever answer the man was expecting, that wasn't it. He took a moment, then asked, "You don't think that I should have told you the truth right away?"

"It's complex. Telling the truth is best most of the time, but sometimes you can't. If lying doesn't hurt anyone, then it's okay."

"How do you know your lie doesn't hurt anyone? What if the lie hurts you? Don't you count as someone?"

"Sorry," There was a mole in the police department. Telling them anything would get him killed. Shinichi pushed the makeshift desk off his chair. The crayon box broke open and scattered brightly colored crayons on the floor. "I can't tell you anything."

The officer sighed, and said gently, "You're a bright kid. Do you know why we put people in jail?"

"To punish them?"

"No," Officer Shibata paused, scratching the back of his head. "Well, yes, but that's not the only reason. We put people in jail so they can't hurt other people, and perhaps give them a chance to become better people. If we can't put them in jail, they might hurt more people. You don't want that, do you?"

Shinichi bit his lip and turned away. He couldn't stop his clenched fists from shaking. He agreed with every word.

"What if you didn't have to say anything – just look at pictures?" Officer Shibata asked, hopping up. He waited for Conan's weak nod before scurrying out of the room. After a few seconds he scampered back, and laid a manila envelope on Conan's lap. "Just look at these and nod if anyone or anything looks familiar."

Conan emptied the pictures onto his lap and obeyed. The first was a picture of a little girl. She was wearing a pink cashmere sweater, had pigtails with brightly colored hair-ties, and her arms wrapped around a patient bloodhound. The next few were of some school grounds, but no crime-scene-photos. The last group were sneakily taken (none of the subjects were looking into the lenses, and the quality said they'd been snapped with a cellphone) of three suspicious-looking men in a waiting room. One had mud on his knees and his leather jacket tucked under his arm; one had mud on his shoes, covering even the laces, and a heavy wind-breaker buttoned up tight. The last man had an obnoxiously bright shirt on and gold chains on his neck, all proudly displayed with a sheepskin jacket hanging over his shoulder in some weird attempt to be cool. He recognized none of them, but, his mind was already buzzing with deductions. He glanced at Officer Shibata. If they hadn't noticed, he had to say something.

"You wanted me to look at these because this rich girl was attacked here." He lined up the pictures as he referred to them. "The attack on her must have been similar to mine, otherwise you wouldn't be hoping that I could help, so she was probably kicked and hit with a blunt instrument, like I was. Therefore, you wanted me to single out this suspicious guy as the person who attacked us both." He pulled out the photo of the guy wearing a jacket.

The officer gaped at him. "H-how?" he managed to stutter out.

"It's obvious. This guy covered his shoes with mud on purpose, and he's refusing to take off his jacket, even though it's hot in the room, and the other guys took off their jackets. There's probably evidence under the mud on his shoes from when he kicked her, and evidence on his arms from when he hit her." He looked up at the man, who had gained a slight green coloring to his face, and some thinly-veiled horror in his wide eyes. Shit, instinct had gotten away from him there. "It's like the game, 'One of these things is not like the other,' get it?" he added quickly, hoping that they'd take that reasoning.

The officer swiftly packaged up all of the pictures except the one of the suspect. "Are you sure that-"

"I didn't recognize anyone or anything in those pictures," Conan cut him off.

His frowned, but the officer didn't challenge Conan's assertion. "Well then, thank you for your insight, Conan."

The young officer turned to exit the room, but Conan stopped him, his little fingers grasping Officer Shibata's shirtsleeve. "Is that girl alright?" he asked. The man turned his eyes down, and continued into the hallway without responding.

In the ridiculously cheerful room, he stared at his little hand, clenching and unclenching, flexing the little fingers. It felt like he was looking at someone else's hand. A woman's voice boomed from the hallway. She didn't sound like she believed him. Perhaps he should have stayed silent, but the moment that thought came up he rejected it fiercely, clenching his hand so tight he could feel his fingernails cutting into his palm.

"Conan?" The woman who'd been shouting at Officer Shibata gently grasped the wrist of the clenched hand, and with her pinky pried his fingers away from his bleeding palm. "Let's get some bandages for that, shall we?"

He relaxed his hand, and let her hold it. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I didn't realize that..." he struggled to finish the sentence. It just sounded stupid. He couldn't say that his body still felt like some weird video-game character's, not his own. The sharp pains in his hand felt real. His nerves reassured him as the bitter antiseptic was dabbed on the small cuts. The chief was really good at this. His hand was bandaged up before he could dwell on it any longer.

"So, about these pictures..." she began gently.

"Can I have my lunch now?" he asked.

She sighed and stood up, dusting off her knees. "Shibata!" she commanded, her voice like a drill sergeant's. It even made Shinichi jump a little. "Go down the street and pick up some lunch for us!" She turned her gaze at him, and suddenly, he felt fear rising in his chest. She was so tall, and her gaze was heavy. "Tell me how you knew who the attacker was."

She was like every intimidating teacher rolled into one. Her voice compelled him to answer.

"I just looked at the pictures... and I saw what you wanted me to see. None of the men in the pictures were the ones that hurt me." He turned his face towards the floor, trying to hide the panic rising in him. This woman was smart. She seemed to know that Conan didn't want someone to be punished for a crime that they weren't guilty for, and she knew that he had to admit he knew who attacked him. Not to mention that he'd just let slip that there were multiple attackers in his case. There had to be some way out of this... then he remembered the exhausting examination and documentation of his injuries.

"You're only looking for one person in that girl's case, because there's evidence of only one attacker, right? But, when I look at my injuries, there had to have been at least two people. One had fat hands, the other had bony hands. The one with skinny fingers was wearing..." he carefully undid the bandages on his neck and showed her the bruises. "...leather gloves. You can see the stitching in the seam."

Mrs. Aono shifted her weight uncomfortably.

"This morning," Shinichi continued, "every single injury was photographed twice, so I got to know them pretty well." He settled back into his wheelchair and clamped his mouth shut. He watched their faces carefully.

The chief glared at him for a moment, but her brow quickly softened. "You really deduced all of that from the pictures alone?" She bit her lower lip, scrutinizing his face.

He nodded.

She sighed, and finally backed away. The medical tape screeched as some was pulled loose from its roll. "Let's rebandage that neck, shall we?"

Once she was done, she rolled Conan into the office, and she and Officer Satou made some phone calls, one eye on Conan, but otherwise leaving him to himself. Again, he set himself to memorizing the room. A crumpled piece of carbon paper was wedged between the trash-can and the wall. The way it was wedged indicated that someone had tried to throw it in, but missed the basket. There were nine chairs in all in the hallway. One had been removed to make space for his chair. It had left drag marks in the dust, and currently was sitting in front of one of the desks. The desks all were tidy, but had stacks of paper and folders piled high. He could pick out Officer Shibata's desk easily – it was the one with three pillows piled on the chair. He rested his head on the armrest of the wheelchair, and dozed off, feeling slightly feverish. The stress was probably messing with his immune system. He didn't wake until Officer Shibata returned with some greasy fast food, and they nudged him awake for lunch.

The food burned in his esophagus, and it didn't sit well in his stomach, nausea rising after only a few bites. He quietly set it aside and went back to dozing in his wheelchair, but he was unable to get more rest. The nausea didn't go away. Instead it grew worse, making him break out in a cold sweat. The adults were all busy – Shibata was filling out paperwork, perched ontop of his pillows so he could reach his desktop. He would be the easiest to interrupt, Shinichi decided.

Fighting the wave of nausea making his head spin, he rolled his chair over to his desk and tried to speak. Vomit – the few mouthfuls of noodles he'd just taken and bright blobs of blood in various states of coagulation spilled out instead. The poison burning its way into him came to mind as his stomach acids washed over his raw flesh. He must have chemical burns in his esophagus. With everything hurting so much, he hadn't been able to differentiate the pain.

The officer leapt up cursing; his colleague called an ambulance.

He wasn't done with the hospital yet, it seemed.

Author's Note:

Shinichi wasn't there to help Kogorou (or add to his head injuries. That part always made me wince. HOW WAS HE NOT HOSPITALIZED WITH MULTIPLE BROKEN BONES AFTER THAT.) Because he wasn't there, the kidnapped kid wasn't saved. All that's left is to find the culprit.

This is another thing I'll be doing: I'll be having them look at cases after they happened, using the evidence that was collected because the police, when sealing off the scene, would never let Conan poke around contaminating evidence. Also, I changed Shinichi's investigating with the police, and had him do cases that were going cold, where all of the evidence had already been collected. This way they didn't have to gather Shinichi's prints or DNA to rule out any contamination by Shinichi in crime scenes. It makes much more sense than him just happening to come across crimes in progress.

In this chapter, I had Shinichi go to be interviewed by the officers who specialize in child-witnesses, since Satou isn't able to get anything out of Conan. My Beta Reader actually deserves a lot of credit for having done research into how child-witnesses are handled. If you're interested, look up the section on interviewing children in the ABE (Achieving Best Evidence). They're a set of guidelines for making the interview with a child compelling evidence while doing it in a way that doesn't infringe on the child's rights, or that traumatizes the kid any farther. It's a fascinating read, and if you write anything with the police dealing with Conan or the Detective Boys, you should check it out.

So, has how Shinichi just pokes around active crimescenes ever bothered you? Do you think that my solution make sense? What do you think of the Tokyo Zombie? Anyone else read Shibatora?