"Sorry to keep you waiting, Wakisaka-kyodai."
Arihiro Zouya held a lighter aloft, its flickering flame cutting through the gloom of the massive, derelict factory until he finally located Shigehiko Wakisaka.
"Not at all. I only just arrived myself."
Wakisaka, his eyes as squinty as ever, rubbed the back of his head and offered a polite, casual greeting.
"Where is it? The item you mentioned?" Zouya got straight to the point, his voice thick with anticipation.
Wakisaka had gathered a pile of scrap wood from somewhere and tossed it into a rusted iron drum. He ignited it, creating a makeshift bonfire that cast long, dancing shadows across the concrete floor. He pointed toward a patch of darkness nearby. In the glow of the fire, the silhouette of a wooden crate was barely visible.
"I left it right there in that crate."
"Is that so!"
Zouya's pace quickened instantly. At that moment, one would never have guessed he was a man in his sixties weighing nearly two hundred pounds.
The crate was filled with a chaotic jumble of junk. Even with his lighter, the old man struggled to see through the clutter. He couldn't help but grumble, "There's so much trash in here, and it's so dark I can't tell what's what."
"There's a flashlight next to the box. Use that to look," Wakisaka said.
He watched the old man's back as he knelt before the crate. A slow, dark smile crept onto Wakisaka's face. His squinty eyes finally snapped open, revealing a gaze steeped in cold malice.
Yes, go ahead, he thought. Use it to find the 'Tiger Scroll' of your dreams. It's the perfect end for you.
"I strongly suggest you don't turn that flashlight on."
Just as Zouya's fingers brushed against the cold casing of the flashlight, a voice rang out from the darkness.
As the echoes died down, three figures stepped into the firelight.
"If you click that switch, you'll be burned to a crisp—just like Mr. Katō," Hattori said, his hands in his pockets as he spearheaded the confrontation.
If the detectives had previously harbored doubts about the device that caused the explosion atop the Tenshu-kaku, the sight of this flashlight provided the final piece of the puzzle.
"Wh-What did you say?!" Zouya's hand jerked back. He immediately scrambled away from the crate, putting as much distance between himself and the flashlight as possible. Regardless of whether the boy was telling the truth, safety came first.
"He's right. This explains the sound of the explosion perfectly," Ikumi Kyosuke said with a nod. She walked over to the wooden crate, her expression calm. There likely wasn't a "Tiger Scroll" in there at all.
To kill someone on the roof of the Tenshu-kaku at night, a flashlight was the perfect lure. The Size D battery they had found earlier had likely been blasted out of the device, and those charred plastic fragments found at the scene were almost certainly the remains of a similar flashlight.
"Are you saying... Mr. Katō was murdered by him?" Zouya asked, glancing at the female detective who stood so boldly next to the "bomb." He marveled at her nerves before retreating to a safer spot behind Hattori.
"Not just Mr. Katō. Miss Katagiri as well," Hattori said, his eyes locked onto Wakisaka. "The culprit behind both murders is the man standing right in front of us: Mr. Wakisaka."
The bait had been simple: a scroll supposedly detailing the location of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's lost treasure. For a group of enthusiasts like the Taiko-Hideyoshi Tour, it was a lure they couldn't possibly ignore.
"He prepared a rigged flashlight on the roof of the Tenshu-kaku in advance and told Mr. Katō the scroll was hidden there," Ikumi explained softly. Even though she wasn't the lead on this deduction, staying silent during the final reveal was a torture she couldn't endure. "To avoid the crowds during the day, Katō was forced to sneak in at night. And in the dark, that flashlight became an irresistible tool."
The purpose of the bomb wasn't necessarily to kill with the blast alone. The flashlight had likely been tampered with to store kerosene or some other accelerant. The moment the circuit was completed, the explosion would spray the victim, and the resulting fire would do the rest.
"I see," Zouya muttered, staring at the squinty-eyed Wakisaka. "Katō climbed onto the roof, found something far more useful than his own lighter, and without a second thought, he flipped the switch and ended his own life."
"The power of that flashlight bomb was finely tuned," Ikumi continued. "Aside from a few plastic shards, it left almost no trace. And since Mr. Katō's own lighter bore no fingerprints other than his own, it was designed to lead the police straight to a verdict of suicide."
"However," Hattori added, "the battery didn't disintegrate. It flew off the Tenshu-kaku and landed below, pointing us right to the truth."
The trick was clever, but it left behind an unavoidable trail of evidence. Even if the detectives hadn't been present, the police would have eventually realized that a simple self-immolation doesn't cause a localized explosion.
"But how did he kill Miss Katagiri?" Zouya asked, still confused. "Those two girls saw it clearly, didn't they? When she lit the fire, there was no one else around her."
"Because the person standing on the bridge performing that act wasn't Miss Katagiri at all, was it?" Conan asked. He adjusted his power-enhancing shoes and looked up at Wakisaka with a look of feigned innocence. Finally, the boy thought, I finally got a word in!
Wakisaka's expression finally flickered into one of genuine shock.
"I've trusted Ran and Kazuha's testimony from the very beginning," Ikumi said with a smile. "I kept wondering where the discrepancy was—how the culprit could make a dead person stand on a bridge, use a lighter, struggle, and then fall. It wasn't until I smelled the kerosene on Miss Katagiri's coat that I understood. The scent was only on her back."
The body found in the water was indeed Miss Katagiri, and the culprit had indeed poured kerosene on her. But the "performer" on the bridge was someone else entirely. The burns on Miss Katagiri's coat didn't match the image of a person completely engulfed in flames as Ran and Kazuha had described.
"He used the same trick with the scroll to lure Miss Katagiri to the bridge, killed her with a heavy object like a stone, and dumped her body into the shallow water," Hattori explained. "Then, he waited for witnesses to arrive."
Once he saw people approaching, Wakisaka—who was playing the role of the culprit—put on a show. He likely wore a fire-retardant layer or ignited a controlled flame on an outer garment, mimicked a struggle, and jumped. As he plummeted toward the water, he tossed his lighter onto the real Miss Katagiri, igniting the kerosene on her body.
Under the cover of the splash and the dark water, he simply held his breath, swam away, and vanished into the night.
"But in this rain," Zouya remarked, looking at Wakisaka, who remained silent with his head bowed, "it's perfectly normal for no one to cross that bridge for half an hour or more. If no one had seen it, the time of death would have been completely off. You took a massive risk."
Zouya looked at his "young brother" in the tour group with a hint of pity. Lighting oneself on fire was no small feat of willpower.
If it were me, the old man thought, I would have just killed them and burned the bodies in a ditch somewhere. Why go through all this theatrical nonsense?
He shook his head inwardly. Still too young.
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