Chapter 19 - Watanabe Matsuri

Watanabe Matsuri, family name Watanabe first name Matsuri. She was the eldest child among three siblings. Her father was the boss of a small manufacturing company, and her mother was a cook. Their family was pretty well off compared to others, but all of this changed once it was found out that her father was doing a lot of illegal things, from blackmailing employees, asking female employees for sexual favors, to even doing some shady dealings with the drug-dealing gangs.

Matsuri's father was scum and because of him, their family took a hard hit, which ruined their reputation. It became difficult for Matsuri's mother and siblings to remain in the place that they lived in. Matsuri's mother immediately divorced her father and took her and her siblings away.

Even though he was scum he was still her father, so she and her siblings would meet their father every now and then during his trial. Eventually, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. There were many families of those affected by what he has done, that didn't like the ruling of the judge and made an appeal. Yet before he could atone for his sins, someone took justice into their own hands and killed him.

It was an act of vigilantism, the person who killed her father wasn't even part of the families affected but someone who simply felt that her father did not deserve a second chance. The person was arrested eventually but that did not bring her father back. In Matsuri's mind, it wasn't just that vigilante's fault that her father had died but it was also the failure of the police that led to her father's death. That vigilante had been at large for quite some time and had killed four others he had deemed as criminals. The police's failure to catch the vigilante which allowed the deaths of four others her father included, had dug into her heart.

So she took it upon herself to become someone that wouldn't allow any criminal to escape. She eventually joined the police force and rose to become a detective at the age of twenty-two. She was the youngest female detective in the entire city.

She had already calmed down from her past hatred and understood that life was too short to be bound by the past. She also now understood that she couldn't become some superwoman that could catch every and all criminals, but she made sure that those that she could catch, she would catch no matter how long it took. Her case completion rate up to now has been one hundred percent.

...

When Matsuri was assigned to the vigilante murder case, four gang leaders had already been killed. The next one to die was the leader of the Hyenas. Matsuri had studied the case and checked the crime scenes multiple times, but no matter how hard she looked there were few to no clues at all.

The suspect would destroy all surveillance cameras near the crime scene on the day of the attack. The suspect left no evidence, the weapon used was unknown, there were no fingerprints or any traceable thing that the suspect could've left. She had checked the nearby buildings were it was possible to have sniped the victims, but that was a dead end as well. It was like the suspect was a ghost, he came and went without a trace.

The only people capable of being so thorough were martial artists, but unfortunately due to lack of evidence, she wasn't even allowed to talk to any of the martial artist families.

The only thing she had going for her, was the numerous cat hair that was spotted at every crime scene. She knew little about how martial artists do things, but she was sure that even they couldn't use some random cat hair as a weapon.

'Still, even though my mind is saying it's impossible my instincts are telling me that these pieces of cat hair really are related to the incidents. Yet no matter how I ask, the people in the lab keep on saying that there's nothing special about them... So how did the suspect use this in his assassinations? Damn, there must be something that I can use, the suspect isn't some ghost, he should've left a trace of him somewhere.'

Matsuri kept on looking at the files on the case but no matter how hard she looked there was nothing to see. The killings also felt so random, there was no link between the five gangs and their leaders.

'Were these attacks truly just some random justice enacted by a crazed vigilante? No, that can't be it, if he was really some crazed vigilante and was this skilled, he would've killed more gang members but he only killed the leaders of each gang... It is possible like those conspiracy theorists on the internet said, that this guy was some hired gun, but who would pay such a professional to kill some low-level gang leaders?'

Matsuri sighed as she couldn't get anywhere at this point. She then took her break and went to the cafe that was near one of the crime scenes. As she ordered her coffee and sat near the window she noticed that in this position she could clearly see the entrance to the building on the other side of the street.

This cafe was one of the places that had their surveillance cameras destroyed. When Matsuri thought of that she suddenly had an epiphany.

'For someone so thorough as this guy, he would've done some groundwork before the kill. He must've observed that building beforehand. The footage lost was just on that day of the incident. Maybe I can spot him checking the building out, the day before.' Matsuri got up from her chair and talked to the manager of the cafe. She wanted to review the footage of the previous days before the incident happened.

She studied every single customer that came to the cafe the day before the incident. There were about twenty people that sat near the window. She looked at the footage of two days before the incident and there were some repeat customers, but none of those that sat near the window was sitting there the day before.

The only other thing of note was that there were three customers that sat near the window that wasn't there two days before the incident. Matsuri left the cafe with copies of the tapes. She was a bit disappointed that she didn't have the breakthrough she expected.

'Still, those three customers might turn out to be something. I better check them out, it's better than nothing.'

Even though she didn't know it at the time, but one of those customers she was suspecting was actually Loki.