Immediately afterwards, a heartbroken scream almost broke Hattori Heiji's eardrums: "Blackie!!"
Mao Lilan picked up the cat, tears already hanging from the corners of her eyes.
However, when she touched it, she found that the cat was warm and quite soft. Hattori Heiji actually lied about the military situation.
After checking her heartbeat carefully, Mao Lilan breathed a sigh of relief: "It's not dead yet, don't curse it!"
Hattori Heiji was not familiar with this cat, but Maorilan and Conan were.
Conan knew it more deeply.
Although there are many black cats on the street, the shape of this cat is still easier to recognize than other cats - it looks very much like a black cat.
Why did it appear at the crime scene?
Countless possibilities flashed through Conan's mind in an instant, and his heart skipped a beat several times.
The worst outcome he could think of was that Numabuchi Kiichiro caught up with Shiraishi in the woods, and then used him to threaten Black Cat to help kill him.
But soon, this possibility was ruled out by Conan.
Let's not talk about Black Cat's unexpected methods. Even if he is really threatened, in that case, the person who kills should be Black Cat who was threatened and became a tool.
But in fact, until Noyasu Kazuto was killed, only Kiichiro Numabuchi's fingerprints were detected on the knife.
So that shouldn't be the case.
...it’s okay if it’s not.
With Black Cat's magic-like skills, if he really wanted to change his career to murder, Conan wouldn't know how to stop him or where to stop him. It would be a disaster.
So, maybe the black cat was also looking for Shiraishi, so it also set its target on Numabuchi Kiichiro and tracked it all the way here?
This one makes more sense. And it’s not as daunting as the previous hypothesis.
Just why did the black cat drop the cat here?
Did he accidentally cover the cat under the basin when he was fighting with Numabuchi Kiichiro and his accomplices?
The base of Okachi Chengjiang's coffee table is very low, about the same height as the basin turned upside down. If you accidentally buckle it and push the basin under the coffee table, you may indeed trap the cat.
...But this cat is not mute. It can bark. How could the black cat not notice it?
Unless the opponent is too strong, Black Cat can't care about this.
When he mentioned an opponent that could defeat Black Cat, a suspicious curly figure wearing a black mask gradually appeared in Conan's mind.
But in the final analysis, this is just baseless subjective conjecture.
What's important now is - what happened to this secret room murder case?
The wallet inserted into the heart clearly shows that it was a homicide or one of the serial murder cases. Even if they try to find a secret room, it is impossible for the police to believe that Okaki Sumie committed suicide.
...Conan pressed his forehead tiredly.
The easiest way is to find the black cat and ask him about his situation.
Speaking of which, the cat doesn't matter.
Conan raised his head and looked at the cat in Mao Lilan's hand, and suddenly felt that from his perspective, there seemed to be something on the cat's neck.
If you look closely, it seems to be a very small round ball, covered by fur, almost invisible.
Conan was confused for a moment and wanted to get the cat from Mao Lilan so that he could check it easily.
However, as soon as he stretched out his hand, the cat suddenly woke up.
It looked up at Mao Lilan for a while, raised its tail and wrapped it around her wrist, and its nails popped out to hook her sleeves. "Don't want to leave" was written all over its body.
Mao Lilan was stunned for a second, then decisively ignored Conan's outstretched hand and hugged the cat back into his arms.
"..." Conan's forehead jumped twice.
I wasn't sure yet 100%.
But now he totally understands.
This is definitely the black cat’s cat!
...Is the thing around its neck a transmitter? Or a bug?
Could it be that the black cat never actually came here, but just let the cat out to track freely, and then the cat found Kiichiro Numabuchi on its own, and was then put into a basin by Kiichiro Numabuchi and his evil companions?
This speculation seems to be more reliable than the previous two.
Because there were not many signs of struggle in the room.
And if Black Cat really came here and started fighting with Numagachi Kiichiro and his accomplices, the noise would definitely not be so small.
Only in this way can Numabuchi Kiichiro and others be able to create a murder chamber more conveniently.
...But again, the murderer has been identified, so the secret room serves a purpose.
As expected, criminals cannot be judged by common sense.
…
Shiraishi didn't pretend to sleep all the time.
Mainly because he was afraid that Mao Lilan would send him to a pet shop for rescue, so that he wouldn't be able to follow them into the congressman's house.
Cat slaves are truly treasures in the world.
…
There was not much that could be investigated at the scene, so the group quickly returned to the police station to continue investigating the relationship between the deceased persons.
Judging from Okaki Sumie's reaction during her lifetime, she must have known Kazuto Noyasu. In other words, this time, Numagachi Kiichiro was not killing people randomly. The targets he chose must be related to each other.
Along the way, Sakata Yusuke gave various hints, and finally made Heiji Hattori and Conan notice the commonality of "driver's license".
After that, they went all the way to the Driving Supervision Office, and finally found out about the driving training class twenty years ago, and found the graduation certificate from that class.
In the photo from 20 years ago, six young students are surrounding the instructor.
Now, the coach has died while driving drunk, and four of the six students have died. Only Kiichiro Numabuchi and Councilor Goji are still alive.
Shiraishi lay on Mao Lilan's shoulder and glanced at the photo.
Tetsuji Inaba is standing in position C. He looks very similar to Yusuke Sakata, even the slits on their hair are exactly the same.
Shiraishi turned to look at Sakata Yusuke and found that he was indeed a little nervous.
Fortunately, due to some kind of power and the fact that there was a light spot on the coach's face that obscured his appearance, Conan and Hattori Heiji didn't notice the problem for the time being.
——At a glance, the most attractive person in the photo is Numabuchi Kiichiro, who has not been captured yet.
"Twenty years ago, something bad must have happened in this driving training class." Hattori Heiji speculated, trying to restore the truth:
"After Kiichiro Numabuchi escaped from prison, he wanted to use that incident to blackmail the local council member and ask him to help him escape, but he was refused. So he started killing the relevant people to threaten the council member?"
Conan shook his head and felt something was wrong: "Except for the congressmen, everyone else is just ordinary people. Can this really threaten the township congressmen who have many bodyguards?"
"Don't forget, Numabuchi Kiichiro probably has an accomplice, and perhaps killing these people was his accomplice's instruction.
"And I always feel that Numabuchi Kiichiro does not have a dominant position in this matter, because those who kill people are usually the oppressed party, unless Numabuchi Kiichiro is a murderer who loves killing..."
Hattori Heiji was still not used to discussing issues with such a young child.
But he looked around and found that except for the strange look in the cat's eyes, no one else felt anything was wrong.