Let us take a man - a very ordinary man. A man with no idea of murder in his heart. There is in him somewhere a strain of weakness - deep down. It has so far never been called into play. Perhaps it never will be - and if so he will go to his grave honoured and respected by everyone. But let us suppose that something occurs…

-The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

PRELUDE

"Me? I'm busy, Sono." There was a pause. "Watching TV."

He was leaning against the far wall of his apartment, one hand loosely holding a remote and the other with his cell raised to his ear. Flashing on the television screen opposite him, the local 10 PM weather report predicted another sunny week, which meant that unless someone fixed the air-conditioning on their floor, he'd be suffocating again in the glorified closet that their department called a criminal investigations office. The woman on the screen cheerfully explained that it'd be a great opportunity to get out of the house, that it was looking like it'd be a gorgeous weekend, and Tohru Adachi switched the power off with an irritated sigh. Tossing the remote onto the only cushion at his table, he inclined his head against the wall and allowed his eyes to glaze over with half-lidded indifference.

And then he was laughing drily into the receiver. "Haha, no. Look, does this have a point?" From outside the window of his kitchen, he heard the sudden, night-shattering howl of the Satonaka's Saint Bernard, and without really thinking, he walked over to shut it, drawing the blinds over the glass and cutting short the evening draft. Above him, the kitchen light hummed through the resuming quiet.

"So take the kid with—" He frowned. "What? Absolutely not. I'm not brat-sitting a whole year so that you and Narukami can enjoy the uninterrupted sex time." There was an extended silence as he listened, and then he pitched his voice an octave higher and rolled his eyes. "Just drop off enough groceries so that he doesn't starve," he whined back. "I'm so glad to hear you haven't changed. Why don't you find him a nice classmate to stay with?"

A different sort of pause, a different expression passing over his face.

"Ah," he said at last. The fingers holding the cell gripped it a fraction tighter. He cleared his throat. "As it happens, I'm not stationed in the city right now." A slow, sick smile twitched at his lips as he listened to her reply. He glanced up at the ceiling light, for a moment, catching the yellow glare with eyes that were suddenly brightened by humor. "If I had gotten someone killed, would you still send your son—yeah, yeah, I know, stupid question."

He looked down again and waited. He grinned. "Nope." The phone snapped shut. Still smiling, he pocketed it and went back into the main room.

In the opposite corner from the TV, his desk sat under a tall lamp and a short stack of paperwork that his boss wanted filled in by the next morning. Idly, he wondered if it'd be worth it to work in the errors this time so that Dojima wouldn't catch on right away, or if there was some other excuse he could dig up to get out of doing it at all. Nothing came to mind, so he sat down, found a pen, and started to scribble kanji onto his reports.

He'd gotten halfway through the first sheet when his pocket vibrated with a text.

"guessing you haven't called home about transfer"

"maybe I should surprise them"

His lips pressed into a thin line as he went to reply, but by then the phone was actually ringing, and he answered it instead.

"Go to hell," he began dispassionately. Then he let out a long breath and glanced down at the unfinished report with a dull sort of acceptance. "Just demoted. To officer." She replied to that exactly as he'd expected. Adachi stiffened, and with a low snarl, he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood.

"Shut up," he said, his mouth stretched with cold fury. "I don't make enough to support two people, so you're sending me a check before I agree to anything."

She was speaking again. Slowly, he sank back onto the chair, bent over with crude exhaustion. The dog was barking again, but this time the noise was dulled, and he barely heard it.

He replied immediately. "A godforsaken backwater shithole called Inaba."

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