"Alright, that's enough joking around. Look what I found!"
Heiji ran over, his face flushed with excitement, only to find the two of them casually discussing the culinary merits of eating Conan.
How cruel… could you at least finish him off before you start eating? Heiji thought, shaking his head.
"A dry cell battery?" Conan finally managed to squirm out of Tsuneo's clutches. He looked up at the object Heiji was holding with a handkerchief.
"Yeah. Looking at the scorch marks, it was likely on Mr. Kato's person when he ignited," Heiji explained. He held a Size-D battery wrapped in a cloth; it bore the same distinct signs of intense heat as the previous findings.
"A battery, charred plastic fragments… it seems we don't need to wait for the forensics report after all," Ikumi Kyosuke said, resting her finger against her chin in thought.
With this new piece of evidence, the 'suicide' theory was effectively dead in the water—though, truth be told, none of the detectives had believed it for a second anyway.
"In other words, someone rigged an incendiary device, placed it on the roof of the Main Tower, and waited for Kato to climb up and trigger it?" Tsuneo remarked, casting a glance toward the grim-faced Ginshiro Toyama nearby.
The police's investigative standards were truly worrying. The two boys had been the first to charge up to the tower, and yet the professional officers had missed such critical physical evidence.
"That should be it. It explains the source of the explosion we heard," Heiji nodded. He was already mentally piecing together what kind of device the culprit could have left on the roof.
There was a lighter at the scene, but no cigarette butts. That means…
As they pondered, Conan suddenly clicked on his wristwatch's flashlight, offering a wide, innocent smile.
A light-sensitive trigger, right?
"Conan should be okay, right?"
Ran and Kazuha had finished a quick dinner and were already making their way back.
"I told you, there's no need to worry. Heiji and Tsuneo-niichan are both there; no criminal would dare get close to them. Besides, that little guy is clearly more interested in the case than anything else. No wonder he and Heiji get along so well."
Kazuha had stormed off earlier, but she wasn't truly angry. On the contrary, she loved seeing the brilliance in her childhood friend's eyes when he was solving a mystery. However, as Tsuneo had pointed out, both of those high school detectives were complete blockheads when it came to anything else.
"I suppose you're right. I feel like Conan might become a truly amazing detective someday," Ran agreed, nodding with a soft smile.
"Well, you never know with kids. They love one thing today and something else tomorrow."
Chatting as they went, the two girls stepped onto the Shinbashi bridge outside Osaka Castle, heading back toward the Main Tower to regroup with the others.
Click.
The crisp sound of a kerosene lighter flicking open echoed through the air. A dark silhouette stood in the middle of the bridge, immediately drawing their attention. Ran and Kazuha stopped in their tracks simultaneously.
It was strange. The person wasn't holding an umbrella despite the rain. Their back was turned toward the girls. What were they doing with a lighter?
In the next heartbeat, the figure did something incomprehensible. They brought the flame close to their own clothes. Within seconds, a roaring fire erupted, engulfing the person in a pillar of flame. The figure struggled violently for a few moments before toppling over the side of the bridge.
Hearing the splash, Ran and Kazuha exchanged a horrified look and sprinted to the railing. They peered down, their faces pale with terror. A figure, still wreathed in flickering light, floated motionlessly on the surface of the dark water…
"KYAAAAAAH!!!"
A piercing scream shattered the silence of the night. The cry was so loud that even Tsuneo and the others near the Main Tower heard it clearly.
"Something happened!" Conan's expression shifted instantly. He turned and bolted toward the source of the sound as fast as his short legs could carry him.
"Follow him!" Ikumi Kyosuke urged, tugging at Tsuneo's arm.
No matter how brilliant the boy's mind was or how many suspicious things surrounded him, he was still a child. If he ran into something dangerous, he wouldn't be able to handle it alone.
"Huh?"
Tsuneo, who had been mid-conversation with Kogoro Mouri, was forced into a jog. Is there really anything that 'Homicidal Soccer Ball' of his can't solve?
Aside from the detectives, the police moved with surprising speed. They arrived at the scene and fished the victim out of the water.
"The deceased is Maho Katagiri. Just like Mr. Kato earlier, she was a member of that tour group," Inspector Otaki reported to Ginshiro Toyama, consulting his notebook. "According to Kazuha and Ran-kun's description, the victim suddenly set fire to her own coat and then pitched over the side of the bridge."
However, the victim hadn't died from the fire or from drowning. The cause of death was a massive blunt-force trauma to the back of the head.
"I suspect that when she fell, her head must have struck one of the bridge piers before she hit the water," Inspector Otaki noted, leaning over to point toward the heavy stone pillars.
Hmm…
It wasn't an impossible theory, but it certainly required a healthy dose of imagination.
"So… it was a suicide?" Kogoro Mouri frowned.
Lighting oneself on fire and then jumping into a river with no one else around—it didn't seem like there were many other possibilities. But what was wrong with this tour group? Why were they losing members to self-immolation one after another?
"Kazuha, are you sure Ms. Katagiri only had a lighter in her hand? Nothing else?" Heiji's first thought was still of explosives or some kind of remote device.
"Yeah. We only saw the lighter. There was nothing else," Kazuha confirmed, nodding. Though it was dark, the flame of the lighter had provided enough light to see clearly. The woman had definitely set herself on fire.
"Are you certain there was no one else? Could someone have run away under the cover of darkness?" Conan pressed.
"She was the only one on the bridge, that's for sure," Ran recalled, her brow furrowed. "But… I think I saw a silhouette holding an umbrella run over to take a look, and then they hurried away in a panic."
"That must be him! He must have been the one to start the fire!" Heiji exclaimed with conviction.
"That theory is even more far-fetched than her head hitting the pier," Tsuneo said, reaching out to pat Heiji's shoulder. "Give it a rest. It's obviously impossible."
According to Ran and Kazuha, Maho Katagiri was standing in the middle of the bridge when she lit herself on fire. How could someone who only appeared after the fact have been the one to ignite her?
"It doesn't make sense! Why would a person just stand there and set themselves on fire for no reason?!" Heiji still couldn't accept it. He spun around and ran toward the body, reaching out to yank back the white sheet.
"Isn't that… against regulations?" Tsuneo asked, looking at Ikumi.
"Completely," Ikumi Kyosuke replied, shaking her head as she watched Heiji begin to handle the victim's clothes.
When a detective cares too much, it's easy for their emotions to cloud their judgment. She understood the feeling of powerlessness when a life is lost right in front of you—especially when the witnesses and police are telling you something that defies logic.
However, as a former medical examiner, seeing this kid with the dark skin manhandling a victim's clothes with his bare hands made her want to kick him into the river herself!
She didn't have to.
From the shadows, a massive hand reached out and seized Heiji by the collar. Simultaneously, a heavy fist swung through the air, sending Heiji flying backward with a powerful blow.
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