A/N: Aah, sorry about the delay! I came back from Paris yesterday so I couldn't update last week. And I can see you've been worried about Tsukiko. No worries, she'll survive!
Chapter 38.
The mansion of death was indeed ablaze when the Mouri household and Yamato Kansuke arrived.
"Ko-Koumei…" The inspector uttered while staring at the orange flames licking the already darkening sky.
"If he was in the house, then he must have already…" Kogoro began.
"No way…" Ran whispered. "How about Tsukiko-chan? She was with Morofushi-keibu, right?"
"Okiya…" Conan thought angrily. "You better not have died…"
A silent cough got the boy's attention though and he looked around to see Uehara holding Morofushi and Tsukiko lying on the ground right next to them. Then the boy looked up. Yamato seemed to be ready to dash into the flames.
"All right, Yamato-keibu!" He raised his voice so it could carry over the sound of the flames and collapsing structures. "There's no use entering the house now…"
"Shut up! How can you say it's useless if we don't even try!?" The police officer snapped.
"Because… It's meaningless to do that now, right?" And the man saw the trio on the side, dust on the faces of all of them.
"Ko-Koumei!" He limped closer. "Hey, whose blood is that!?"
"I entered the house through the backdoor, where the fire hadn't spread, and found him lying at the crime scene with his head bleeding…" Uehara explained. "Okiya-chan was unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. I suppose she fell down on them… It seems like someone hit him and possibly tripped her."
"Who was it, Koumei!? Who did it!?" Yamato demanded urgently.
"Don't bother… He's completely unconscious. They both are. Moreover, the wound is on the back of his head. If he was suddenly hit from behind, it's unlikely he saw the culprit's face…"
Tsukiko coughed quietly again but didn't wake up. Ran kneeled beside the blonde girl and began wiping soot away from her face with a handkerchief.
"But the culprit can be anyone among the people over there…" Conan stated while looking at the three suspects of the case. Oh the confusion…
"Eh? It was Naoki Shirou's cell phone?" Uehara asked. The two victims of an assault were lying on hospital beds and kept in the same room for safety reasons. Both of them were still unconscious though. "The mail was sent to those three people from that phone?"
"Yeah… It's possible that the culprit stole the phone after killing him and changed the mail address afterward." Yamato explained. "Then, he proceeded to send the same mail to the three suspects, including himself…"
"I see… The three suspicious ones are Midorikawa Naoki-san, Yamabuki Shouji-san and Momose Takuto-san…" Kogoro listed the suspects. If Tsukiko had been awake she'd have facepalmed. Seriously, listing the suspects in every chapter… "If the culprit calls the other two over, he wouldn't be the only one without an alibi when the house is burned down…"
"But why did he have to light the house on fire?" Ran asked.
"Don't you see?" Conan butted in. "The dying message of the red wall left by Akashi Shuusaku-san somehow reveals the name of the actual culprit! so it's no surprise that the culprit would want to burn down the mansion."
"Unfortunately, Koumei-keibu happened to be inside with the blonde girl, so the culprit had no choice but to knock him out and trip her and then attempt to burn them to ashes with the mansion…" Yamato sighed.
"And, does that mean you've already discovered the meaning behind the red wall?" Ran smiled to Conan.
"Well, if only that were so…" The boy smiled back nervously. And got hit a top of his head by Kogoro.
"Hmph! Don't act so full of yourself when you don't know the truth!" The chain-smoker stated, irritated.
"Well, even though we've lost the first crime scene… We did receive a new clue. That text message from Koumei… 'The late Koumei'…" Yamato had taken the message up on his phone again.
"Could it have been purposely sent to Kan-chan by the culprit?" Uehara asked.
"I don't really think it's possible. Because that message was interrupted halfway; he said that he'd contact Yamato-keibu as soon as he discovers the truth…" Conan pointed out. "So, it must be that Morofushi-keibu was knocked out by the culprit when he was trying to text Yamato about what he found out and pressed send before he lost consciousness. And thanks to Tsukiko-neechan's message shortly before it, we know that too."
Once again Kogoro didn't get the reference in the proverb and Ran had to explain it to him. Uehara concluded that it must mean that one of the late Akashi Shuusaku's friends was the culprit and the red wall message was meant to scare the culprit.
"We don't know what his dying message is trying to say…" The woman sighed.
"Well, compared to that, what's even more confusing is why did the culprit leave the message of the red wall in the room of the next victim, Naoki Shirou?" Yamato stated. The conversation turned then to the motive of the first murder and the unclear text message of the Koumei.
"Say, Conan-kun… What did Tsukiko-chan send to you earlier?" Ran asked when the quartet was walking on the corridor of the hospital. Uehara was staying in the room of Morofushi and Tsukiko.
"The same she told me earlier when we were in the red wall room for the first time: 'Think like an artist.' But I don't really get it… I'm not an artist after all. Ehe he he…" The boy rubbed his head. "But I think she had an idea about the culprit since the beginning. She said she needed to test her theory and told me last night that suspecting Naoki Shirou-san is too simple."
By then the girl's words at the second crime scene came to the boy.
"Seeing that the message can't be simply the red wall… You have to consider the entire room… Dammit, I did it again…"
"She definitely had an idea…"
"Sorry about this, calling you all the way out here, and not letting you do much…" Inspector Yamato told Kogoro.
"No, no, I'm the one who's embarrassed about not contributing enough… Despite what you said, why do I get the feeling that the one you really wanted to invite is this brat with glasses?" The sleeping detective frowned.
"Well, this little kid is a pretty good choice for keeping as eye on Koumei…" Came the explanation. "Since Koumei often starts to ignore everything around him when he begins to reason, ending up unaware of any danger he's in… So, he may not even listen to the two of us… I thought maybe a bit of naïve advice from a kid may get through to him but he still went off by himself like that, dragging a civilian with him too…"
Conan deadpanned mentally at those words.
"Anyways, if you solve the mystery of the Red Wall, make sure to contact me first…"
"Sure…"
Tsukiko blinked once. She blinked twice. She took a deep breath and found she had an oxygen mask on her face. The pair of greyish blue eyes looked around in the room. She wasn't in the mansion anymore. She could remember the sound of the flames around and the outline of someone taking her out of the house. Probably. It all could be just her imagination. In any case though, the girl wasn't there anymore.
"Ah, Okiya-chan, you're awake." A female voice said near her. It took the blonde a while to locate the source of the voice but when she saw Uehara Yui, a smile found a way on her face.
"We were worried." The police officer told the girl. Tsukiko let out a chuckle.
"It's official now… I hate hospitals."
"Wearing light green when performing surgery is because they keep seeing blood while they operate…" Conan explained to Ran and Kogoro.
"They keep looking at it…" Yamato continued.
"Afterimage…"
"Their focus…"
"This Akashi-san was an artist. This is his atelier… Then, there's a signature in the right bottom corner of the red paint. He signed this dying message as his own piece of art. Besides… isn't 'Red' a bit too straight forward?"
"My eyes just hurt from staring that red wall for such a long time…"
"Think like an artist."
"Dammit, I did it again…"
The realization came to them as did Tsukiko's words from the last two days.
"I see… So that's why the chairs were painted white and black at the first crime scene…" Inspector Yamato smiled.
"Yeah! Because Shuusaku-san liked chess!" Conan agreed.
"If so, why did the culprit create a red wall at the second crime scene too… Even after leaving this clue we still can't understand the truth behind it…"
"What if there was a third person who did so?"
"You have to consider the entire room."
"I see! The original message…"
"Was not 'Red Wall'…"
"The only person who would think like the culprit…"
"…is Naoki Shirou!"
"Finally…" A new voice joined in. "You've finally deduced up to here…" It was inspector Morofushi who was being helped by Uehara.
"Ko-Koumei!?"
"They definitely took their time, right?" Tsukiko walked to the group behind the two. She was still adjusting her coat and pulling her beanie over the bandage on her head. She had hit her head in the stairs after all. But no broken bones which was a relief. "Pity I couldn't see their struggle in the end."
"Tsukiko-neechan, you knew since the beginning who was the culprit, didn't you?" Conan glared at her.
"Maybe…" She smiled but when she saw the slight glare she was getting from Yamato too, she sighed. "Okay, yeah, I had an idea who it could be. I mean… Black and white are opposite so why not the culprit be the opposite from the red wall? Complementary colors, you know. But it was just a hunch and no evidence so I decided to stay quiet and observe what else we had other than the dying message."
"But is it okay? To be walking around?" Kogoro asked Tsukiko and Koumei.
"Yes, I'm quite alright…" Morofushi told the detective. Tsukiko merely nodded.
"All right, I understand now! Let's go reveal the culprit!" Yamato huffed.
"'Drawing mochi on the floor will not satisfy your hunger'…" Koumei stated. "Such a pity, the conclusion from our deductions is like mochi drawn on the floor… It can't be eaten…"
"In other words, we lack evidence…"
"But… Naoki Shirou-san said this before, right?" Conan pointed out. "He's going to that place called Lecce in Italy soon… If he's gone, you can go and find him there!"
Tsukiko couldn't help but smile at the faces the two inspectors made.
"Oh, this is rather interesting…" Morofushi smiled.
"In that case, I have a great idea." Yamato smirked.
"I have a clever plan too."
"Hey! You should let headquarters handle this case."
"Then, why not try this?" Conan asked. "Type your paln in one word using your cell phone and let the other person see it! Just like Kongming and Zhou Yu before Battle of Red Cliffs!"
"Not bad…"
"Hmph! So troublesome…"
"Who wants to bet that they have the exact same plan?" Tsukiko asked amusedly. Uehara glanced at her and smiled too.
"Well, it's entirely possible…"
Empty fort strategy
The three suspects were talked to once again and the culprit swallowed the bait. Tsukiko was kept out of their sight though because she had seen the face of the culprit and the culprit himself knew it too. When one of the other suspects asked about her absence, it was easy to Yamato say that she was still unconscious.
But now the plan was in motion. The first half was over but the most important part was still ahead. Or like Koumei said: "100 kilometer journey is only half over after 90 kilometers."
"What? A taxi robber around here?"
"Yeah, we need to head there right away…" The two police officers watching the back of Naoki Shirou's house left. But before the real culprit, Midorikawa Naoki could make his move a drunken man sat down against the fence and a masked man continued his march past the apartments. This made the murderer hesitate.
"Mister, you'll catch a cold if you sleep here!" A boy with brown hair and striped shirt told the drunkard.
"Shuddap! What's a kid know!" The man shouted, scaring the boy.
"Kaji-kun, what have I told you about talking to strangers?" A girl resembling the boy appeared on the street and took the boy's hand.
"Not to, Tomo-neechan." The kid went as close to the girl as possible and practically hid his face into the knee length skirt she was wearing.
"Come on now, Kaa-san is waiting for us." The girl sighed, pushing her braided hair over her shoulder and leading the boy away.
"Hai…"
"Who does that stupid boss think he is…" The drunken white collar worker muttered.
"Are you alright, dear?" A couple stepped in, the woman supporting the man who seemed to be drunk too. "Let's make that the last drink and go home!"
"Pshh! Two or three more should be fine!" The man slurred. He tripped on the other man's leg then and stumbled on the ground.
"Ah, sorry…" The sitting man with a tie around his forehead waved. Extortion followed and wiped all suspicions of the masked man being a cop. Especially after the said man climbed up the apartment wall and nicked a pair of panties that a woman had just hung up to dry on the balcony next to Shirou Naoki's apartment. The man slipped easily into the murdered man's apartment and stole cash from there. Midorikawa ran to the front of the apartment only to find the police cars gone from there too.
So when the panty thief was gone with his new-found cash, the double homicide offender took his chance. He went to look for the right shoe.
"Perhaps… This is the shoe you were looking for?" The boy from earlier asked, holding up the shoe in question.
"The heel of the shoe is loose and it's easy to see that someone hid a cell phone memory card inside…" The boy's 'sister' appeared beside the kid as he removed the heel.
"That's right… The city of Lecce corresponds to the heel of the boot-shaped Italy on maps!" The boy announced proudly.
"W-Who are you!?" Midorikawa stuttered.
"Come on we've met several times already, did you forget about me so soon?" The boy took off his cap and removed the wig then.
"And me… You tripped me quite nastily earlier this day." The girl sighed, when taking off her wig and revealing her blonde hair.
"Edogawa Conan…"
"And Okiya Tsukiko…"
"Tantei saa…"
"De-detective?" The culprit managed to say. At that the rest of their party arrived.
"But I believe…"
"You haven't…"
"Forgotten about us…"
"Right?"
"Midorikawa Naoki-san!" They said after one other.
"Then the police leaving and the random acts of crime…" The actor began.
"Yeah, it's the empty fort strategy!" Yamato told him. "If we simply remove the police, you would definitely suspect that it could be a trap, and that the actual police force is hiding somewhere else."
"However, when you witness those people around the apartment who look nothing like tha police and they're committing small crimes, you'll let your guard down…" Morofushi continued. "Basically, the 'empty fort strategy' is to 'purposely shoe weakness and let the enemy think there is no trap'…"
"So it's true, you guys purposely talked about the boot to get me to expose myself…" Midorikawa sighed.
"No, we believed from the beginning that you would some here." Yamato stated. "We tried to lure you here before that… Why would the culprit duplicate the same dying message at the second crime scene? If the wall was not actually the dying message the victim left us…"
"Exactly." Koumei picked the explanation from that. "If it's not the victim nor the culprit, but a third person who painted the wall red. Then we can come to the conclusion that the culprit duplicated the scene to confuse the police investigation."
"So, is the third person Naoki Shirou-san?" Kogoro asked.
"Yes… He is the only one besides the culprit who would change Akashi-san's message… When he arrived there, the writing on the wall probably said: 'The one who killed me was Naoki', pointing at you, Midorikawa Naoki!" Yamato announced.
"I see, so when Naoki Shirou-san came to borrow money, he happened to see the message on the wall and thought that it was pointing at him, so he painted over it." Uehara realized.
"But why didn't he use kanji to avoid confusion?" Ran thought aloud.
"Because if he spray paints kanji, it's hard to make the small details clear." Conan explained to her.
"And when he painted over it, Naoki Shirou-san did not consider that the 'Naoki' on the wall did not refer to his last name, but rather than to you, the only person whom he addresses by their first name…" Morofushi continued.
"So afterwards, he tried to hustle you when he realized the true meaning of the dying message?" Yamato guessed, addressing the murderer this time. And the confession came. After that Tsukiko pretty much tuned out the rest of the conversation. While she had liked the case itself back home… once again, she found the murderer extremely annoying and pathetic. He didn't have a proper motive other than that he was in love with Kobashi Aoi and decided to take a revenge on her death.
"'No distant meddling on close ones'. Maybe… Outsiders should not interfere with the relationships between close people…" Koumei stated before Uehara led Midorikawa away.
"Well, Koumei, you take care of the rest." Yamato told his rival. "Since you're the one who figured it out first. Although I don't like it much, you go ahead and write the report."
"Hmm… I knew it." The inspector with a bandage around his forehead smirked. "Apparently, you had that kid follow me around to spy on me. But no matter what, I was a suspect, which seemed too dangerous for him to stick around me… Basically, you asked me to bring along that intelligent kid because you never suspected me from the start, right? Al let him be an ally to help discover the truth."
"What are you saying? He's only a little brat!"
"When we were thinking that the culprit was challenging us by recreating the red wall at the second crime scene, he was the only one who said: 'Isn't the culprit going to worry? Imitating the dying message without fully comprehending the first crime scene?' If it weren't those words and the girl action right after it, I don't know whether we would have discovered the truth behind the red wall." Came the explanation. "And it was the same case for the proof. When we were stumped because of the lack of evidence, that kid mentioned information about Lecce, leading us to the answer… Letting me take the credit for this case so I can return to work in Nagano… That was your plan all along, right?"
"A plan that wasn't exactly subtle." Tsukiko added, appearing behind Koumei. She grinned. "Such unnecessary thing…"
"Hmph! If our roles were reversed, you'd have done the same for me, right?" Yamato and Koumei exchanged annoyed glares.
"No, no… I would never act as childish as you did…" Koumei smiled.
"What!?"
"I would've done a much better job, not letting you find out one trace of my plan."
"Oh really?" I understand!" The hotheaded inspector growled before limping away. "Fine! I'll just take credit for this case! You can just stay where you are for the rest of your career!"
Tsukiko chuckled. Obviously those two were rivals until the end. Rivals and best friends just like Heiji and Shinichi.
"Okay, now when the mystery is finally solved, I can delete that video from my phone." She stated offhandedly. "And I gotta buy that book from somewhere…"
"Book?" Koumei repeated, woken up from his thoughts about Conan(ya know the ones in the end of the chapter).
"Yes, the one Kobashi Aoi wrote. My interest was piquet, especially after watching the interactions of you two inspectors." The girl smiled and got one in return.
"Do read it. It's one of my favourites."
A/N: And review replies:
-chibianimefan26:
Do watch Sherlock. It's brilliant! And yea, Tsukiko is kinda difficult character to be compared to the cast.
I'm trying to. teh hype is too high not to.
-Hanako875:
I can't wait for Bourbon either. Too long time!
yeah, poor Tsuki. But now she is better.
-GeekyGenius:
15: thank you. I wanted those two to have similar names.
17: yes, a classic. I absolutely love them.
30: Thank you. Tsuki didn't tell her real identity to Akai because honestly it doesn't matter in this world. In some chapter you might get to know it though...
32: This was one of my faves too. And yes, messing up with Conan is too fun!
35: The foreing accent was shrugged off because in Conan's opinion Tsukiko was merely faking it just like Jodie. And Jodie speaks great Japanese in reality. Miyoshi will found out more eventually. :) Just wait.
37: Well, now you see that she's safe. Uehara dragged her and Koumei out. Oh, but Koumei was first because he was further away.
-KittyKatrona:
5: thank you very much. I'm glad you like this.
37: The chapter is up! And Tsuki is safe! \o/ Sorry for the delay.
-Akai4ever:
Tsukiko can't affect the main lines of the Plot. The world prevents her. It also makes her react naturally to some situations.