A Year of Jubilee [The Death Note Fanfic]

Chapter 5

L sat crouched on his swivel chair, eyes glued to the monitors and thumb in his mouth, lost in thought. Around him officers paced. Watari stood by serenely, waiting behind a cart of refreshments.

"There is at least a 22% chance probability that the woman who calls herself Julie Amachi is telling the truth," he said softly to no one in particular.

"The truth?!" snorted Aizawa. "The woman is delusional. She's guilty of nothing more than insanity. You've locked up an innocent madwoman, Ryuzaki." He stopped his pacing and turned to glare at the detective in the chair. "The police force is going to have to go through a lot of headache to cover up this one. And whatever additional burdens this...this, trauma, is going to put on that poor girl's psyche...let it be on your head."

"Well said, Aizawa," said L calmly, not bothering to look away from the screens. "It is most certain that Julie Amachi believes that every word she has said is true—up to a 99% chance probability."

"How do you know that?" asked Matsuda.

"Physiologically, her muscle tension eases as she is speaking, her breathing is steady, and the cadence of her voice remains level." Matsuda gave L a look of admiration before the latter continued, "But also we have her hooked up to a lie detector. The only way to pass it is to tell the truth or believe you are telling the truth."

"Why didn't he just say that part from the beginning?" whispered Matsuda to Aizawa, who simply glared back. To L he asked, "But what makes you think that any of what she said could be true at all?"

"Well," said L. He sat back on his haunches and rested his hands on the knees of his jeans. "First of all, everything she has said, so far, in no way conflicts with my suspicions of Light. In fact, it goes in line with them."

"But that's no excuse!" exploded Aizawa. "You're just using what you want to hear, to support what you want to believe is true! We still have no concrete evidence that Light—"

"Secondly," continued L as if Aizawa had not spoken, "The creature that she described to be following Light could very well have been a shinigami."

Silence fell over the room then.

"'L, do you know,'" the detective quoted aloud the last message left to them by the second Kira, "'That shinigami love red apples?'"

"And then when he or she sent a message to the First Kira, it said something about showing their shinigami to each other," murmured Matsuda, remembering.

Aizawa scoffed. "It's got to be code for something. Shinigami don't exist."

"There's a 50% chance likelihood of that, yes," agreed L, reaching over for the refreshment cart. Watari intuitively held out a small a la carte tray and L, with a nod of thanks, grabbed a cupcake and stuffed it in his mouth whole.

"How does he keep eating like that and still stay so skinny?" Matsuda hissed behind his hand to Aizawa.

"Would you please, stop asking stupid questions," grit Aizawa through his teeth. "Focus on what's important."

"Sorry," mumbled Matsuda.

"So then." Aizawa crossed his arms and stared L down. The crouched detective didn't even notice him, simply grabbed another cupcake and wolfed it down. Indignant, the police officer continued, "How do you propose to figure out whether what this girl saw—what she thought she saw—was a shinigami or not?"

The detective shrugged. "One way to find out." He swiveled back towards the monitors and hit the intercom button. "Miss Amachi," he spoke into the microphone. His voice echoed back on the audio input in a tinny vibrato.