Phone Call

"These phones are driving me crazy..."

- Hirokazu Ukita

Phone Call (電話, Denwa) is the eighth chapter of volume two and the fifteenth chapter of the Death Note manga series.

Plot
Ukita, an NPA task force member, is at the NPA offices where he is being bombarded by phone calls from people who swear they are Kira.

Meanwhile, L is watching the video surveillance of some of the FBI agents the moment they died. While L is watching footage of Raye Penber, L notices that the agent stayed on the train for an hour and a half after he received the file before dying. Suddenly, L notices that Penber had an envelope when he entered the train, but didn't have one when he exited the train. They deduce that Penber must have left the envelope on the train. They also notice him looking back at someone in the train as he was dying. L orders that they investigate Ray Penber's case further.

Light has been writing names in the Death Note all night. He is scheduling their deaths a few weeks in advanced just in case something was to happen to him. It will look suspicious if L realizes that the deaths of criminals stop when Light is in the hospital. Light notices that no new information has popped up in his father’s computer, which means that there have been some major changes at the NPA. Light hides a piece of scrap from the Death Note in his wallet.

Ukita, from the NPA office, then calls L and tells him that he is on the line with a person who has interesting information about the Kira case. It is Naomi Misora's mother who tells L that her daughter was Raye Penber's fiancée. She tells him that after Penber's death, Misora decided to take the investigation into her own hands, but she hasn't returned her phone calls in days. L remembers working with Misora and thinks it’s strange that she would commit suicide over her fiancée's death. This is enough evidence for L to narrow down his investigation to the people that Raye Penber was shadowing. L decides to take drastic measures and set up listening devices and cameras in the homes, even though that’s illegal in Japan of the two NPA personnel that Penber was investigating. There were only two families that Penber was investigating: the family of Deputy Director General Kitamura and the family of Detective Superintendent Soichiro Yagami.

Conception
Ohba wanted the telephone to be an important element in the chapter "Phone Call." Ohba added the scenes with Ukita answering the telephone because he had chosen the chapter title. Also he included the telephone call from Naomi's mother to the Task Force.