“I’ve been waiting for you, Rickey. What took you so long?!”
Canberra National University Hospital, entrance. The first to greet Patrick as he arrived at the police cordon restricting entry was his former partner, Noemi, clad in a bulletproof vest.
Behind her, through the entrance of the hospital, Patrick could see figures who appeared to be members of the Prime Minister’s Official Residence Security Unit, pacing about and surveying the area. It was then that Patrick realised the victim was indeed a government VIP, Senior Technocrat Pellmond Varlozzi.
It was only natural, then, that the ABoI had launched an investigation, and it made sense that a request for assistance had been sent to the ASI. It was to be expected that Noemi, an elite agent from headquarters and a promising rising star, would be assigned to the case. And it was a matter of course that, in requesting assistance from the ASI, Noemi would specifically nominate Patrick.
“There were roadblocks everywhere, causing traffic jams all over the place. To top it off, a security guard stopped me when I tried to enter the car park… —Believe me, I hurried as much as I could.”
Patrick shrugged and made his excuse as Noemi berated him for his tardiness. But Noemi was having none of it.
“Then you should have ridden a bike or run,” she retorted sharply.
“Unfortunately, I have legs that are not suited for cycling or running. As you well know, I’m sure.”
“Spare me the excuses. Just get inside, quickly. We’ll talk as we walk.”
Patrick followed Noemi’s lead and entered the hospital. When he had visited last night, he had formed an impression of it as a ‘perfectly ordinary, quiet, large hospital’. But this morning, it had been transformed, filled with a tension like that of a crime scene in the immediate aftermath of an incident.
The staff and patients, the unrelated civilians, passing through the facility seemed to have been kept in the dark, their faces uniformly anxious. Seeing this, Patrick drew a sharp breath. A real emergency was unfolding.
“So, how much do you know about the case?”
Patrick followed Noemi to the front of the lifts. As they stood there, she asked him the question. But Patrick did not answer immediately.
He opened his mouth only when the lift arrived on their floor and the doors slid open.
“I have been informed of the victim’s identity and his current condition.”
The two of them stepped into the lift and waited for the doors to close. Once they were shut, Patrick spoke again.
“Senior Technocrat Varlozzi. He was shot and is in a critical, unconscious state, I believe. The sole witness, his daughter, is refusing to talk. There is also a lack of physical evidence, and the recovery of records such as surveillance footage is proving difficult. That is my understanding.”
“Yes, that’s right. To make matters worse, someone claiming to be the daughter’s guardian showed up and insisted that the interview had to wait until I arrived. But given the circumstances, we can’t afford to be leisurely. So I want to get the information out of the daughter before the guardian shows up. That’s where you come in. You were always good at it, weren’t you? Coaxing testimony out of witnesses.”
Noemi pressed the button for the third floor. Beside her, Patrick folded his arms. One phrase had bothered him.
Before the guardian shows up. Finding her choice of words odd, Patrick put the question to her.
“A guardian? But… she has a father. So why a guardian?”
“He’s her father, but not her legal guardian. He was deemed unfit, and the children’s court apparently stripped the Senior Technocrat of his parental rights. But, well, it seems he cleared that hurdle by transferring his daughter’s custody to a female acquaintance and living with them. He wasn’t abusing his daughter, and she apparently didn’t want to be separated from him, so the court allows them to live together.”
“Huh, taking custody of an acquaintance’s child… There are some strange people in the world.”
“The director of the Varlozzi Foundation, Cecilia Cahill. If you believe her public reputation, she’s a person of exceptional character. So much of a saint it’s almost scary. —Though, that very saint is causing us problems right now.”
“So, what was the reason for the revocation of his parental rights? If there was no abuse, why was such a decision made?”
“The reason hasn’t been disclosed, so I don’t know. And I didn’t think it was particularly relevant to this case, so I haven’t looked into it deeply. If you’re interested, you can ask someone at the ASI to investigate.”
Just as Noemi finished speaking, the lift stopped, and the doors separating it from the corridor slid open automatically. They both stepped out and headed towards the intensive care unit where the victim was being treated.
On the way, Patrick continued to question Noemi.
“So, Noemi. Could you tell me more about the victim’s condition?”
Eileen had told him this morning. Patrick’s mission was to extract the information held by Senior Technocrat Pellmond Varlozzi. And it was presumed that the shooting and subsequent hospitalisation of the Senior Technocrat had been orchestrated by the Special Service Agency WACE. If so, they must have held back. They would have made sure not to kill him.
—That was what Patrick had been thinking, and he had asked Noemi for confirmation. But the answer he received was not what he had expected.
“He’s hovering between life and death. The doctor said that while he’s holding on, the situation is precarious. It’s entirely possible this could turn from an attempted murder into a murder.”
“Is it that serious?”
“Yes, it is.”
“...I see.”
He had been told the victim was in a critical, unconscious state, but he had not imagined it was this dire. Noemi’s words came as a shock. But she was not finished. She continued to reveal facts that underscored the gravity of the situation.
“The current theory is that he was shot repeatedly with a nine-millimetre handgun. According to the emergency surgeon, there were fourteen gunshot wounds. One of them seems to have been a through-and-through, but the rest… well. They apparently removed everything that was inside his body, but one bullet seems to have hit the aorta directly.”
“Fourteen shots?”
“Yes. And it wasn’t random firing. The wounds were clustered around the arteries. They said the amount of blood loss at the scene was enough to have been instantly fatal. It’s a miracle he’s alive.”
Enough blood loss to have been instantly fatal? A miracle he’s alive? …The words tumbled out of Noemi one after another, leaving Patrick stunned. The method of the crime spoke of nothing but clear, murderous intent.
And to the wide-eyed Patrick, Noemi stated the obvious.
“So, as you can imagine, the victim himself is in no condition to speak.”
“I’d say so…”
“That’s why we want to talk to his daughter, who was at the scene, but…”
“She’s not talking. …Is she really a witness?”
“There’s no doubt about that. When the city police rushed to the scene after receiving reports of gunshots from local residents, she was under her father, who was barely breathing, crying with a stifled voice. We have a photo, too. Here, look at this.”
Noemi took out a tablet and showed Patrick the image on the screen.
The photograph showed a situation exactly as Noemi had described. A red-haired woman was lying face down under a man who was lying limply in a pool of blood. From the photo, the woman appeared to be about sixteen years old, with the air of a calm high school student from a well-to-do family.
As she showed him the photo, Noemi explained the situation at the time.
“According to the officer who took her into protection, she said her father, who was walking behind her, suddenly pushed her and told her to get down. She fell to the ground and lay face down. The moment she fell, a series of gunshots rang out, and her father fell too. Even after her father fell on top of her, shielding her, she heard several more gunshots. She also said she felt her father’s body convulsing against her back.”
“And what is her condition now?”
“She gave that statement to the officer who took this photo, and she’s been silent ever since. You could say it’s understandable, given the shock. But because of it, we have no description of the culprit, not even their gender. That’s why, Patrick, I need you to give it your all.”
As they were talking, they arrived at the intensive care unit where the victim was being treated. But three members of the VIP protection unit, dressed in black suits, were standing in front of the entrance, and they did not look as if they were going to let them in. They had the look of men who would not permit entry, even to an investigator.
Noemi’s expression soured, and Patrick shot a provocative glance at the security team. But the professional officers simply stared at some point down the corridor, seemingly oblivious to the man and woman in front of them.
After a short wait, the door to the intensive care unit opened from the inside, and a red-haired woman emerged—it was the victim’s daughter from the photograph.
“Ah…!”
Patrick was about to speak to her, but her gaze remained fixed on her own feet, and she did not say a word. From experience, he knew that this was a situation he could not handle on his own.
But an idea struck him. It was a difficult decision, one he would rather not make. But he had no choice.
“…Noemi. I believe the best course of action is to call a psychiatrist. You know, him.”
“Ah, Carl! That’s a brilliant idea.”
As the quick-witted Noemi responded, the Senior Technocrat’s daughter hurried away as if to escape. One of the VIP protection officers followed her.
In the direction she had fled, there was a sign for the toilets. She probably was not planning to escape from the hospital, but simply needed to use the loo. Deciding this, Noemi chose not to pursue her and instead turned back towards the lift.
“Right, I’ll go and get Carl now!” she said, before running to the lift and getting in.
Noemi, accompanied by Carlo Santos, returned to the floor of the intensive care unit ten minutes after the Senior Technocrat’s daughter had finished in the toilet and returned to the ICU.
Patrick, who had been standing in front of the ICU waiting for their return, had endured those ten minutes in an awkward atmosphere.
He had been watching the downcast, silent daughter of the Senior Technocrat, and the nurses bustling about inside the ICU, all while being watched by the VIP protection team stationed at the entrance. The ten minutes had felt strangely long, but once they were over, they seemed to have passed in a flash.
“Yo, Rickey. See you again. Did you sleep well last night?”
Arriving in the space thick with discomfort was Carlo Santos, wearing the ‘mask’ of a refreshing young psychiatrist. He ignored the security team’s attempts to stop him and pushed his way into the intensive care unit. He then spoke to the red-haired woman—Elaine Varlozzi, the Senior Technocrat’s daughter—who was waiting by a bedside. He then emerged from the ICU with her.
“Good news, investigators. She’s agreed to be interviewed. However, you’ll have to do it right here.”
Elaine followed timidly behind Carlo Santos as he strode confidently, shoulders back. Just as the two of them reached Patrick, Noemi arrived, having been delayed.
“No, Carl. If possible, somewhere else—”
Noemi replied to Carlo Santos’s words, but he immediately refused.
“I’d rather you didn’t conduct the interview inside the intensive care unit. However, she doesn’t want to leave her father’s side. And if you were to conduct the interview in a separate room, I imagine the VIP protection team here wouldn’t be too happy about it, would they?”
After saying this, Carlo Santos glanced at the security team stationed at the entrance to the ICU. But the officers, focused solely on their duty, did not move a muscle. They were not going to rise to his provocation.
However, the fact that the officers did not complain meant that they had no objection to Carlo Santos’s words.
Noemi and Patrick exchanged a look, and both nodded at the same time. They had both agreed to Carlo Santos’s conditions.
After confirming that they had agreed, Carlo Santos turned to the awkwardly standing daughter of the Senior Technocrat, Elaine. He then revealed his identity to her.
“…Right. Let me introduce myself again. I’m Carlo Santos. I’m a psychiatrist at this hospital, but I also work as a freelance psychoanalyst on the side. In this context, a psychoanalyst is not someone who treats patients, but is more akin to a criminal psychologist. I sometimes work with the authorities and assist in investigations. My being here now is part of that. However, I was called in suddenly this time, so I’m not up to speed on the situation…”
“…”
“—Elaine. For now, just tell them what you can. Would you be willing to answer the questions of the investigators here? They may not look like much, but they are excellent investigators who have solved numerous cases. Please, trust them.”
After Carlo Santos had finished speaking, Patrick and Elaine’s eyes met for the first time that day. When Elaine nodded, Carlo Santos, judging his role to be over, quietly left the scene. He had returned to his work.
“Well then, Miss Varlozzi. May I ask you about your father’s case?”
When Patrick asked, Elaine nodded. Then, she answered in a low voice.
“…Yes, of course.”
After Elaine nodded, Noemi took out a voice recorder and began to record. She then pointed the microphone of the voice recorder at Elaine.
As soon as they saw the voice recorder, the VIP protection team all grimaced. However, they did not protest the recording.
Taking this as permission from the security team, Patrick took out a notebook and pen from inside his jacket. He prepared to take notes, and then, with a frown, said,
“First, let me say this. This is just my personal opinion, but… —I believe this investigation will become a cold case. I have a feeling that there are large forces at work behind the scenes in this case. It’s possible that some mysterious power will intervene and the investigation will be shut down. If that’s the case, it will be a race against time.”
At Patrick’s words, Noemi was speechless. Her face was a picture of someone wanting to complain, what are you on about all of a sudden? But the others present responded to Patrick’s words with a small nod. Some of the VIP protection team even nodded silently, and even Elaine seemed to agree with Patrick’s words, lowering her eyes.
And Patrick continued. The bewildered Noemi could only stare at him.
“Therefore, swift action is key. We must do what we can before this mysterious power makes its move.”
Patrick, his eyes filled with determination, spoke to Elaine. We want to do our best, and for that, your cooperation is essential, he conveyed.
She looked back at him with an expression of complete trust. But Patrick’s stomach churned.
He had just told a terrible lie.
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