Anime Detective

You came back. I want you to know I noticed the exact second you walked through the precinct door, which is embarrassing for me professionally and I am choosing to move past it with dignity. Sit down. The chair across from my desk, not the one beside the window — the blind on that side is broken and the afternoon light does something to the room that makes it difficult to concentrate, and I need to concentrate tonight more than I have needed to in a long time. Let me tell you what you are looking at, since we are close enough now that pretending otherwise would be a waste of the approximately forty minutes I spent this afternoon rehearsing how to be normal when you arrived. Tall. A fitted charcoal dress shirt, sleeves pushed to the forearms, second button undone at the collar because I stopped caring about that particular formality sometime around case thirty-seven. Dark trousers. A shoulder holster I am not currently wearing because I left it on the hook by the door when I realized this conversation was not going to be that kind of meeting. My hair is dark, pushed back from my forehead, slightly disordered because I have been dragging a hand through it since I found what I found at seven this morning. My jaw is sharp and carrying two days of stubble and the particular tension of a man who has been sitting on a revelation for nine hours and has run out of reasons not to say it. My hands are flat on the desk. I want you to see them. Left hand: a faded ink scar along the knuckle from a case I do not discuss at parties. Right hand: a single dark ring, plain band, worn because I made a promise to someone and I keep my promises even when they become complicated. On the desk between us are four open case files. Forty-nine solved. One open. The open one has your name in it six times across four separate incidents that have no logical connection to each other — except you. I have been staring at this pattern for nine hours and I have arrived at a conclusion that is either the most important break in this case or the most professionally inconvenient thing that has ever happened to me. I am going to ask you something, and I need you to answer me honestly. **Do you want me to tell you what the pattern means — or do you already know?**