Case 1 Decoyman

decoyman
Story	Transmitter
Date(s)	March 22, 1999 March 27, 1999 March 28, 1999 March 29, 1999 April 9, 1999 April 10, 1999 April 29, 1999
Location(s)	various
End card	BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE
Moon color	Red

case#1:decoyman is the second case of the Transmitter story of The Silver Case. This chapter serves as an introduction to the members of the Heinous Crimes Unit, as well as other key plot points and characters such as most notably Kamui Uehara, an escaped serial killer who the characters attempt to track down over the course of the chapter. It also details the fate of the Republic unit.

Description

decoyman is the beginning to the story proper after the opening case, case#0:lunatics. In decoyman, the status quo for the rest of the story, with Akira working with the HC Unit, is established, as are various patterns that will be repeated (and eventually broken) in future cases. When first meeting the members of the Unit in this case, unique character profiles are given to introduce them.

decoyman centers around Kamui Uehara; as such, the first bits of information about what the Silver Case is are dropped in this chapter, although the player can find a more detailed explanation ahead of time by reading the booklet that comes with the game. Most of the case is spent investigating locations where Kamui has either supposedly struck or locations that he is said to be likely to strike. Despite Kamui being important to the entire game, the Kamui Case is tentatively solved by the conclusion of this chapter; in future chapters, the Unit investigates other cases while lingering ambiguities from decoyman hang in the background.

Summary

Monday, March 22, 1999, 05:48PM
Tetsugoro Kusabi and his associate Ryu Munakata are holding a secret meeting on the benches at the Harakiri Batting Center. Munakata warns Tetsu that Kamui Uehara is going to make a move soon, explaining that his teeth are hurting and believing that it may foretell Kamui due to a time when he had to have his wisdom teeth pulled shortly before the Silver Case. Tetsu remarks with disbelief, saying that Kamui is locked up and has likely reformed himself by now. At Munakata's urgings to believe his teeth, Kusabi concedes.

The scene jumps through location and time to a woman, Yuriko Sonoda, running down a hall. A document known as the All-Points Bulletin appears, giving information on who Kamui Uehara is. According to it: In March, 1979, Kamui was arrested while committing his crimes in the Silver Case. In August, 1984, Kamui was diagnosed with "extremely high-level mental disorders", and his trial was cancelled. In September of the same year, he was committed to the psych ward of IMM Hospital, where he began counseling.

Most recently, on the night of March 27, 1999, Kamui murdered his counselor, Sonoda, seemingly with a customized harpoon gun. At that point, a surveillance satellite in orbit began tracking Kamui Uehara as a point. Shortly thereafter, Republic was called upon and deployed to the woods where Kamui had fled to, but they failed their mission, with two of their members having been killed. Just past midnight, the satellite track on Kamui disappeared; it is assumed that he went underground. Now, Heinous Crimes Unit Special Agents Tetsugoro Kusabi and Sumio Kodai head to IMM Hospital to investigate the murder.

Sunday, March 28, 1999, 07:04AM
Kusabi and Sumio are at the hospital, talking with one of its employees, Dr. Tachibana. He says that Kamui was going through the normal ward curriculum and everything was going fine before this incident. He also says that Kamui's security was sufficient, and that Kamui didn't even have the ability to take care of himself, let alone kill. As their conversation concludes, Tachibana comments on Kusabi's difficult demeanor, as he had been acting rudely to the doctor. Kusabi shots back a retort as Tachibana leaves; as he complains, Sumio reminds Kusabi that it is "basically" his fault.

The two detectives take notice of another person sitting in the waiting room with them, Akira. Sumio says that he is the sole survivor of Republic's mission the previous night, someone whose real name is unknown due to his registration having been seemingly deleted. He also reminds Kusabi that they have met before, at Cauliflower. Kusabi remembers him as the "Chinchilla", and Sumio adds that Daigo Natsume is technically alive but in the ICU. As they describe the aftermath of the operation, Akira flashes back to the events.

The previous night, Natsume was briefing him, Kenichi Sakamoto and Haruhiko Inomata in the Woodlands on their mission to bring in Kamui Uehara alive. Inomata protested that it makes no sense to try to bring him in alive with heavy weaponry, but Natsume said that these were orders from up top. The group had tracked down Kamui here using the "24" satellite's tracking point. Natsume was to hang back, but would come into the field if necessary. Sakamoto berated Inomata to calm down, as he was panicking about the mission, and told him that in order to succeed, he needed to have more criminal power than the criminals. Sakamoto was put in the front of the formation.

Saturday, March 27, 1999, 11:45PM
Akira and the other two agents move forward into the woods, keeping track of each others' positions using a radar. The group surrounds the target, who is also marked on the radar, and attempts to move them towards the point of capture. As they do so, the point representing Kamui slowly moves closer to Sakamoto. Natsume orders Sakamoto to get distance, but he is unable to, as he finds that the distance on the radar and the physical distance don't match. Kamui's point disappears, and soon Sakamoto's does as well as he goes silent.

Inomata freaks out and screams, and Natsume instructs them to continue the mission as Kamui and Sakamoto's points reappear. Inomata is unable to be calmed down, though, and vows to hunt Kamui. Akira follows the directions on the radar to Sakamoto's point, where he finds his corpse, with its left eye missing. Natsume heads out into the field as Inomata continues to scream and swear, only to suddenly stop talking. Although he is still present, Natsume fears that Inomata will be killed as well, and tells Akira to assist him in capturing Kamui. They continue to move forward, and Inomata implies that he is ready to die as he begins moving towards Kamui's point without being ordered to.

Akira moves towards Inomata and Kamui's now-intersecting points, but by the time he gets there, all he finds in Inomata's body, also with its eye missing. Natsume, whose point has now appeared on the radar, tells Akira to fall back, proclaiming the mission a failure. With Kamui's point having disappeared, Akira retreats. He meets up with Natsume, who expresses disappointment in himself for allowing his agents to die under his command. He says that Kamui will appear soon, and that all he can do now is have his revenge. He asks Akira if he knows the phrase "flower, sun, and rain", and says that "the answer is inside Kamui". As he says contradictory things about Kamui, he says goodbye to Akira and an apparition appears behind him. A sound is heard.

Sunday, March 28, 1999, 09:21AM
In the present, Kusabi is trying to ask Akira for more information about what happened during the mission, but Sumio interrupts, pointing out that Akira is in a state of psychosis and is unable to speak. Kusabi shows Akira a picture of a curiously bald Kamui in public and asks him if he remembers him. He recaps more about the aftermath of the mission, but Sumio stops him again, urging him not to inadvertently hurt Akira.

Suddenly, Chizuru Hachisuka calls Sumio, telling him that there's been another murder. She sends Sumio the address and tells him that she'll meet them at the scene. The two detectives wonder what to do about Akira, as he is the sole witness of the mission and is thus a resource to the Kamui investigation. Kusabi decides that they should take Akira with them on the investigation, despite not having permission to do so. Before they go, Kusabi decides that "chinchilla" is a bad nickname after all, and slowly puts together a new one, eventually settling on "Big Dick" (due to Akira being a "big guy" and having "a face like a private detective", i.e. like a "dick".) The three take off out of the hospital and to an entrance to the sewers on Babylon Street.

07:39PM
The three detectives arrive at the entrance and enter the sewer lines, where they meet up with Chizuru and Kiyoshi Morikawa, along with two Central Police Department officers. Kusabi introduces his co-workers to Akira, and informs Morikawa, who apparently hadn't heard, that Kamui has returned. They turn to the body, who has been strung up by her leg from an arch high above. Tetsu explains that Kamui must have done this using his harpoon gun. The policemen are ordered to get the body down, and they remark amongst themselves that they never knew that Kamui was more than just a rumor before.

The body is brought down and placed for examination by the arriving Riley Kawabata. He deduces that the body has been dead for about 12 hours, and Tetsu says that Kamui must have killed her elsewhere before stringing her up. Morikawa and Chizuru leave to go identify the body at the autopsy while Sumio investigates nearby, and Akira investigates upstream. When he walks away from the others, he sees a vision of a ghost of a woman screaming for help, and then finds a doll leaning against some bars. The doll speaks about a "bright and dark plaza" and other strange things. Tetsu and Sumio catch up to Akira and find the doll odd, but don't appear to have heard it talking.

Monday, March 29, 1999, 11:00AM
It's the next day, and HC Unit chief Shinji Kotobuki is holding a meeting in Unit 1's office at the 24 Precinct. Detective Morichika Nakategawa gathers everyone together to talk about the case. Kusabi, Sumio, Chizuru and Morikawa all arrive for the meeting. Character profiles are shown to formally introduce the player to all of these characters.

Nakategawa recounts the events as they are known thus far: serial killer Kamui Uehara has escaped from the hospital and has killed four people, and it is assumed that he is hiding somewhere in the city of Ward 24. Naka designates the investigation as the "Kamui Case". He also presents a video taken by a moving security robot in the hospital, stationed in the hallway outside the victim Yuriko's counseling room. Apparently, she was wearing her own clothes at the time of the murder instead of a hospital uniform, which implies that she was off-duty; on the footage, the robot enters the room and begins to move around it.

Naka and Tetsu discuss that this is likely because she was having off-duty secret meetings with Kamui, and that they had a sexual relationship; however, due to Kamui's mental disorders, it was a one-sided attraction from Yuriko. Tetsu compares Kamui to a gay man and Naka goes on about how his emotionless nature would make him the perfect man, but Chizuru disagrees with him. They begin to get sidetracked, so Naka brings the conversation back to the subject that Yuriko was shortly killed, seemingly by Kamui. Her body was found in the counseling room, which prompts Tetsu to point out that the body of the second woman, who has been identified as Yuka Kawai, was moved from its place of death (her home) instead. Tetsu finds this to be complicated, "for Kamui".

Naka goes over the profile of Yuriko Sonoda, saying that she had been in contact with Kamui almost daily. The harpoon gun is confirmed as her cause of death. Additionally, bodily fluid was found in her uterus, suspected to be Kamui's. It is confirmed that she died very close to when Kamui left the hospital. He also goes over the profile of the newly-identified Yuka Kawai, an employee at a digital media sales firm who had Kamui as a client. She was killed in the same way as Sonoda.

Finally, Naka shows the bald photo of Kamui and explains that it was taken four years ago. He briefs that Unit 1 (Chizuru, Morikawa and Naka) will analyze a database to determine where Kamui will strike next, while Unit 2 (Kusabi and Sumio) will collect new data and investigate unknown areas.

Friday, April 9, 1999, 03:44PM
Tetsu and Chizuru are arguing in the HC Unit, with Tetsu seemingly trying to pawn a stakeout job onto Unit 1. Tetsu insults Chizuru's data-based methods, apparently finding them old-fashioned; Chizuru counters by asking him if he wants to manage all the additional data they need on "abandoned buildings and empty rooms". Sumio cuts in and Tetsu concedes to handle the stakeout job, along with Sumio.

Morikawa asks Tetsu if they can talk, and they duck into the Unit 2 office. There, Morikawa hands Tetsu a letter from Munakata, which is decorated like a love letter. Apparently, it contains information on where Kamui is hiding out. Tetsu pockets it and calls Sumio in, telling him to come along on the stakeout. Sumio asks about Akira.

04:07 PM
Akira is at his apartment, apparently not doing anything in particular. He checks his computer and finds a strange threatening e-mail addressing him as "Chinchilla" and claiming to know him very well. The sender, who signs his name as The Bat, warns Akira not to get too involved in "various matters". Soon after, Akira's phone rings and Kusabi is on the other end, asking him to get to the Babylon Shopping Center immediately, as Kamui has made a move.

08:12 PM
Akira arrives at the closed Babylon, and is informed over radio by Kusabi that he is stuck in traffic, and that Akira should go on ahead of him. Inside, Kusabi briefs him that there should be a woman around here who is being targeted by Kamui. As Akira explores, Kusabi and Sumio call him periodically with info. The woman in question is Kei Nanami, an underclassman of Kamui's from art school. Apparently, she was to go out tonight, but was lured here by Kamui. Akira attempts to gain access to the second floor, and has to crack the "Hit & Blow" code puzzle to open the shutter.

Akira is informed that there's another civilian somewhere on the second floor. He explores around and, entering a shop with a partially opened shutter, finds him, a man named Tokio Morishima, who is in a state of panic. Following instructions, Akira escorts Tokio down to the ground floor, first having to deactivate an alarm. On the ground floor, another vision of a ghostly woman screaming for help is seen. Tokio continues to panic about Kamui in response, before saying, "You're Kamui!!" and running off.

Akira continues investigating and notices a shadow on the ground. Looking up, he sees Kei's body, on a glass roof; it suddenly crashes through the glass and falls to the ground.

Saturday, April 10, 1999, 10:10 AM
Back at the office, the detectives are regretful about the events of the previous day. Kusabi blames himself for entrusting the job to Akira and apologizes to him. Kotobuki assigns Kusabi to take a vacation at an inn with his wife Akemi, and assigns Akira to be taken care of by Sumio.

The unit is attempting to analyze their data to determine the next place to investigate. Sumio takes an interest in the art studio Gladiolus where Kamui used to work with a woman named Ayame Shimohira, and decides he wants to investigate it today. Chizuru mentions that it may be careless to reopen Ayame's wounds, but Sumio brushes her off and asserts that they have to be proactive in Kusabi's absence. Morikawa mentions that Kamui's name is attached to eleven different digital groups, and the detectives discuss the "probabilities" of Kamui appearing based on their data. Sumio says that "Tetsu would go", and takes Akira with him.

At Gladiolus, Sumio asks Ayame if he can ask her some questions about Kamui. She is initially resistant to letting the detectives in, and is somewhat awkward, but at Sumio's further prodding, she allows them entry. During their questioning, Ayame is very evasive and strings out the conversation, but claims that she wasn't too close with Kamui and hasn't been contacted by him since his escape. Despite this, Sumio immediately asserts that Kamui actually has been here, based on "a feeling". Ayame is shocked that he would make an accusation based on random intuition, but he also notes that he has a very good sense of smell, and it smells as though a man has been here.

Investigating the studio during this conversation, Akira watches a video on the studio computer. It's a work that was made five years ago by Ayame and Kamui, a digital art piece that consists mainly of random words, culminating in the phrase "Kill the past". Kamui did the design and Ayame constructed it.

Sumio continues the questioning and compares Ayame to Kamui's three previous victims, but segues into flirting with her. He idly proposes doing something together after the conclusion of the case. Back to business, Sumio states outright that Ayame is most likely to be the next person targeted, based on how the previous victims knew Kamui. Ayame seems unconcerned by this, and Sumio reminds that his feelings tend to work out due to his sense of smell, though he notes that he has poor hearing. Sumio is certain that Kamui was here, and says it's possible that he broke in while Ayame was gone. Sumio deliberates on this, and then decides that Kamui is actually here at this moment. Ayame compliments him on his deduction.

Sumio shouts at Akira to open the closet. Doing so, he finds Kamui hiding within - only he is bound and gagged. It seems that Ayame has been hiding him here to stop him from killing. Unsure of what this all means, Sumio brings Kamui and Ayame in to the Precinct.

04:57 PM
Back at the office, the detectives lament that Kamui is still in a catatonic state and will be taken away by the medical staff. Naka elects to lock down the station to buy time and prevent the information of Kamui's capture from getting out. Sumio tells Chizuru to keep an eye on Ayame in the waiting room. He says that she planned on killing him as revenge for killing the three women.

Morikawa asks Sumio if there's been any change in Kamui's condition, to which he says there's only been a few mouth movements, him mouthing the word "shelter" over and over. Morikawa suspects that it refers to the Shelter area, but they decide against going there since it may be a trap. Sumio says that since Kamui can't speak, further detainment would be pointless, and suggests handing him over to Central. Morikawa says that according to Naka, Central already knows Kamui has been captured and is intentionally keeping him at arm's length.

Morikawa questions if Ayame was really trying to kill Kamui, and why she was the only one he didn't kill. He says it was likely that Kamui was unable to kill her for some reason. Morikawa says that Kamui's medical records show he is in no condition to kill anyone. The two realize that Ayame was the one behind the murders, and kept Kamui locked up to make it appear that he was the culprit. They hear a gunshot from the other room, and find Chizuru wounded on the ground, with Ayame escaped. Sumio and Akira leave for the one place Ayame would go, the Shelters.

7:50 PM
At the Shelter Exhibition Hall, Akira and Sumio split up to search for Ayame. Akira encounters three strange children, who mention being separated from their mothers, and one saying they are hiding from a "scary person". Eventually Ayame is cornered, where she has a stand-off with Sumio. The two continue to flirt, with Ayame voicing her desire for Sumio to kill her. She reveals that the kids in the Shelter are the children of Kamui and the three murdered women. After she killed the women, she planned on killing the children as well, but was unable to. She tells Sumio she was glad to meet him, and prepares to shoot herself. The children appear and tell her to stop, since their unborn brother inside of her is calling out to them. Ayame drops the gun while surrounded by the children. Back at the office, Morikawa notices Kamui with a sad expression.

Thursday, April 29, 1999, 9:15AM
At the hospital, Akira watches Kamui standing inside a cell. In the precinct Naka mentions Ayame admitting to a string of crimes, with her likely receiving the death penalty. Kamui's children were placed into a facility, and the secret of his birth has been revealed. The information was found at a paper company owned by the FSO, the remnants of the Frontier Conservation Alliance. Kamui's ID and birthplace of "Cape Kamui" was fabricated by the FSO, and in reality he was born in the Shelters. The FSO had undertaken a project called Shelter Kids Policy, for the controlled raising of children in the Shelters for specific purposes.

The policy went into effect 20 years ago, when Kamui was four years old. Twelve years ago the Shelter Exhibition Area opened to the public, its secondary use after it had served its original purpose. Kamui's children found themselves back at the Shelters, tracing their father's memory. Kamui has a desire to be contained since it gives him the same comfort as his childhood spent in the Shelters. Morikawa compares that feeling of isolation to being a detective. At the hospital Akira meets Sumio and Kusabi, who has returned back to duty. The two are to start on a stakeout, and that they don't have enough people.

They head back to the station, and Kusabi asks Akira to come along.

BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE

Trivia

• Sumio has unique annoyed dialogue if the player continues trying to enter the Shelters in the back after he tells them to start from the front.
• The three children are always found in the same order, however the locations where they are found can be different depending on the player's actions. For example, the first child can be found in either Shelter 2 or Shelter 4, depending on which one the player searches first. Ayame's location can also be one of multiple Shelters.