Raye Penber

Light-eyed and dark-haired, Penber cuts a handsome figure, though the games recolor him with brown hair and blue irises. For tailing his target he favors business dress beneath a long coat. American by birth but born to a Japanese mother, he speaks the language with an accent pronounced enough that Light catches it immediately.

Penber is a conscientious, by-the-book investigator who takes his duty seriously yet keeps a level head under pressure. During the hijacking he moves to defuse the danger himself and shields the other passengers, weighing when to draw his weapon with cool calculation. Off the clock he is warm and protective toward Naomi, gently insisting she stay clear of the case for her own safety. That same straightforwardness, his readiness to flash his badge and take Light at his word, is ultimately what leaves him exposed.

Penber is on the verge of clearing Light, who looks like nothing more than a studious teenager, when the case takes a violent turn. Riding a bus behind Light and his date Yuri, he finds himself in a hostage situation after an armed bank robber, Kiichiro Osoreda, seizes the vehicle. Light slips his date a note claiming he will rush the gunman, and when Penber moves to stop him, Light cannily tests the stranger until Penber produces his FBI badge to prove he is no accomplice. The standoff ends when Osoreda, having glimpsed Ryuk thanks to a planted scrap of the Death Note, panics, empties his gun, bolts from the bus, and is struck dead by a passing car. Penber parts with Light believing his cover intact, and Light promises to tell no one, not even his father Soichiro.

The encounter has in fact handed Light his target's face and trust. On December 27, 2003, Kira corners Penber underground at Shinjuku Station, forbidding him to turn around and proving his power by killing a shop worker on cue. Coerced with threats against himself, Naomi, and his family, Penber boards a Yamanote Line train and writes the names of his fellow FBI agents onto a Death Note page, sealing their deaths without realizing it. Minutes after stepping off the train, at 4:42 that afternoon, his heart gives out, and the last thing he sees is Light's face. His fiancee Naomi, herself a gifted former agent, is left to grieve and would soon chase the truth on her own. Across adaptations he is renamed, becoming Raye Iwamatsu in the film series and Mark Dwellton in the 2015 television drama.