The message arrived at Wammy’s House shortly after midnight.
There was no warning attached to it, no explanation, and none of the usual layers of coded correspondence that accompanied communications from Watari. The transmission was brief enough that, for several seconds, nobody seemed to understand what it meant.
L is dead.
A second line followed.
Watari is also dead.
For years, Wammy’s House had existed in part for the possibility contained in those two sentences. The orphanage was not simply a home for unusually gifted children. It was a place where potential successors to the world’s greatest detective were identified, educated, tested, and prepared for a future that everyone hoped would remain theoretical.
That future had arrived.
The message had been automatically transmitted through a contingency system established by Watari. According to the instructions accompanying it, if L and Watari became unreachable within a specified period of time while actively working a case, Wammy’s House was to assume that both men had been killed.
The system provided no details about how they died.
It did, however, identify the case.
Kira.
The name had already become known around the world. For months, criminals had been dying of sudden heart attacks under circumstances that defied conventional explanation. The deaths had spread across countries, jurisdictions, and continents. Police agencies had no obvious murder weapon, no clear method, and no reliable way to identify who would die next.
L had concluded early that the deaths were murders.
He had also concluded that Kira was somewhere in Japan.
Now L was dead.
For Roger Ruvie, the head of Wammy’s House, that fact carried an implication far more troubling than the loss of a detective.
If L had been killed while investigating Kira, then Kira had somehow discovered a way to kill him.
The automated instructions left by Watari were explicit about what should happen next.
The two highest-ranked candidates to succeed L were to be informed immediately.
Near and Mello.
Neither received the news particularly well.
Near listened without visible emotion, seated on the floor and turning a small plastic figure between his fingers as Roger explained what had happened. He asked several questions about the timing of the transmission, whether any additional messages had arrived, and whether L had left behind records of his investigation.
Mello’s reaction was considerably louder.
He demanded to know how L had died, who had been with him, whether Kira was responsible, and why no one at Wammy’s House had been warned that the investigation had reached such a dangerous point.
Roger had answers to almost none of those questions.
What remained of L’s investigation was uncertain. Watari had maintained extensive digital safeguards, including systems designed to erase sensitive information if he became incapacitated. Depending on what occurred immediately before his death, portions of L’s records may already have been destroyed.
The contingency instructions anticipated that possibility.
Near and Mello were not being told to continue L’s work exactly where he left off.
They were being told to reconstruct it.
Every publicly known Kira killing was to be cataloged again. The timing of the deaths would be reviewed. Geographic patterns would be reconsidered. Public statements made by investigators would be compared against Kira’s apparent responses.
Most importantly, the successors were instructed not to assume that any of L’s conclusions were correct simply because L had made them.
That instruction may have been the most characteristically L-like part of the entire message.
If Kira had defeated L, then somewhere in L’s reasoning there may have been an error.
Finding it could be the first step toward finding Kira.
The instructions also addressed a problem that Roger had hoped would not become relevant for many more years.
There could only be one L.
Wammy’s House had produced several candidates with extraordinary abilities, but Near and Mello had long been considered the strongest possibilities. Their approaches, however, could hardly have been more different.
Near was patient, analytical, and willing to allow information to accumulate before acting. He treated investigations almost like puzzles, assembling pieces slowly until the shape of the solution became unavoidable.
Mello was aggressive, competitive, and willing to take risks that Near would never consider. He was more likely to force an opponent into making a mistake than to wait for one to occur naturally.
Together, Roger suggested, they might be capable of surpassing L.
Mello rejected the idea almost immediately.
He had no intention of sharing L’s position.
Near appeared indifferent to the title itself.
The disagreement created an immediate complication for the succession plan.
Watari’s instructions had assumed that the surviving candidates would cooperate long enough to stabilize L’s unfinished investigations. They were to establish secure communication channels, identify trusted contacts within law enforcement, and determine whether anyone directly involved in the Kira investigation could be safely approached.
But Kira presented a unique problem.
If Kira had killed L and Watari, then anyone associated with them could potentially be in danger.
Names were not to be transmitted unless absolutely necessary.
Photographs were to be restricted.
Direct contact with members of the Japanese investigation team was discouraged until Near and Mello could determine exactly what information Kira had obtained about L.
They were also warned against announcing L’s death.
As far as the outside world was concerned, L could remain alive.
The deception served two purposes. It prevented criminals around the world from learning that the detective they feared was gone, and it denied Kira confirmation that L’s organization had collapsed.
Someone, eventually, would have to assume L’s identity.
Whether that person would be Near, Mello, or someone else remained unresolved.
For the moment, there was only the investigation.
Near asked for everything Wammy’s House possessed concerning Kira.
Mello asked for the last known location of L.
Roger told them both that preparations would begin immediately.
By sunrise, two separate workspaces had been established. Files were being collected from secure archives. News reports of Kira killings were being copied and indexed. Every surviving piece of correspondence involving Watari was being reviewed for clues about L’s final days.
Nobody at Wammy’s House knew what had happened in Japan.
They did not know that the investigation had brought L closer to Kira than anyone else in the world.
They did not know whether L had identified his killer before he died.
They did not know what Kira was capable of.
But the succession system had been created for exactly this moment.
L was dead.
The investigation was not.