SailorStar9: With Chapter 39 uploaded, this is Chapter 40 of this fic. (Sighs) Guys and girls, is it too hard for you to leave a review, instead of just putting this fic up on your favorited list and story alerts?

Disclaimers: I own absolutely nothing, except this plot and the pairing.

Pairing: Established!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami

Chapter 40: The Blind Spot in the Share House


Time passes...

"Ran-chan is the strongest in the karate club?" Kawakami Yasuko gushed.

That's right, Yasuko-san." Yajima Yayoi bragged. "Boys that take her lightly get sent flying by her kick."

"Hold on, Yayoi-san." Ran chided. "That's a bit of an exaggeration."

"Amazing." Kawakami beamed. "You must be a karate master."

"Not at all." Ran chuckled.

"As her senior in the karate club, I'm proud of..." Yajima started. "Is that the time?" she glanced at the wall clock. "It's already this late. I should go take a bath."

"I'm back." Suzuki Hidehisa entered the dining room.

"Welcome back, Suzuki-san." Kawakami greeted.

"This is my junior at school, Mouri Ran-san." Yajima introduced.

"Suzuki-san, would you like to eat some cake with us?" Kawakami offered.

"I'm home." Kanou Katsuko had also returned. "Suzuki-san's still here?" she grabbed a bottle of red tea from the fridge. "I wonder what the landlord would say? 'Hurry and get out', probably."

"Are you the one who spread that lie?" Suzuki retorted. "That I'm a peeping tom?"

"But women deserve to be able to walk the streets in comfort." Kanou shrugged.

"We have a visitor." Kawakami rebuked.

"Please stop, Katsuko-san." Yajima chided.

"Yayoi-chan, what makes you think you can say such things to me?" Kanou retorted. "Whatever, I'm going to go practice tap before I bath."

"Katsuko-san," Kawakami voiced. "Didn't you say you would refrain from practicing tap? My room is right under your room. Katsuko-san, you like cake, right?"

"Brown-nosing, now?" Kanou snorted. "Then, I'll have it later."

"Don't worry." Kawakami assured Ran." Suzuki-san' isn't a peeping tom. Katsuko-san only spreads that rumor for her own selfish reasons."

"It's fine." Suzuki replied. "I'll have a talk with that woman about this later. Thank you for the cake." he took his slice. "I'll eat it in my room."

"This shared house is full of lots of different things." Ran mused. "I couldn't help but think it was well decorated when I first saw it. Even the door to this common area is glass and a nice plant is placed in the corner."

"It's hard to find a layout we all agreed with." Kawakami remarked. "We're all strangers, yet we live together. It can be a little worrying. Since there are various rules to follow. We use stickers to mark everyone's property here. I guess I'll go in now." she swapped places with Yajima who had just finished her bath.

"I'm sorry." Mouri voiced, arriving with Conan to pick Ran up. "We're pretty late getting here."

Just then, they heard Suzuki's horrified scream. "Inside..." he pointed. "Katsuko-san is..."

The camera panned out to reveal the dead Katsuko lying on her bed with her throat slit.


Afterwards...

"The victim is Kanou Katsuko-san, age 25." Takagi reported. "The murder weapon appears to be the knife that is left on the scene. It was checked, but there were no fingerprints on it. According the Mizuno-san, the time of death is estimated to be between 7.15 to 7.45 pm. Also, it was determined that sleeping pills were in the plastic bottle found on the floor of the room."

"So, she was stabbed after being put to sleep." Megure noted. "Suzuki-san, could you please explain the circumstances that led you to find the body."

"A message from Katsuko-san was written over there on the message board for me this morning." Suzuki turned to the white board. "'I will come to your room before 8 tonight. I want to talk. Keep this a secret.' is what it said." he insisted. "So, I erased it off the board myself. I'm always the last one to leave the house in the morning. So Katsuko-san probably waited until she was alone and then wrote it on the board. In accordance to the message, I waited in my room for her to come over. But she still hadn't come and it was past 8:00. When I decided to go to her room, I found her like that on her bed."

"Do the two of you have any ideas about this?" Mouri asked, seeing Kawakami and Yajima exchange looks with each other.

"Actually, Katsuko-san and Suzuki-san have been arguing nonstop lately." Kawakami related.

"They even argued earlier this evening before going to their rooms." Yajima added.

"It's not just me." Suzuki snapped. "Yasuko-san and Yayoi-chan disliked her as well."

"Wait a minute." Ran spoke up. "I don't think either of them have anything to do with this case. From 7:00 to 8:00pm, the both of them were taking their baths since it was their scheduled time. And when one of them was in the bath, the other was always with me."

"They have scheduled bath times." Conan stated. "Since it's a shared house."

"And I was here the whole time except for when I was in the toilet once." Ran supplied. "You can see the corridor through the glass door. No one walked through the corridor during Yasuko-san's bath time. What's wrong, Conan-kun?" she asked, seeing Conan's expression as she was washing up the glasses.

"So, there wasn't anything odd, then?" Conan inquired.

"That reminds me." Ran recalled. "Yayoi-san, didn't you tilt your head while washing earlier?"

"That's because normally when someone is taking a bath, the water doesn't come out of the sink with as much force." Yajima explained. "But at the time, it was coming out like it always does."

"The bath is that way, right?" Conan ran off to confirm his suspicious.

"What's wrong?" Yajima came in after Conan.

"What is this?" Conan pointed to the white drops on the bathroom floor.

"It's shampoo." Yajima looked closer. "It was a new bottle, so I spilt some by mistake today. I thought I had wiped it all up, but I must have missed some."

"Why is this area lighter than the others?" Conan asked, walking up the staircase.

"A picture was displayed there, but the owner of the house took it down yesterday." Yajima replied.

"Inspector Megure." Takagi shouted. "Please come, hurry."

"This towel was discovered inside Suzuki-san's cupboard." Megure showed the three residents the bagged bloody towel.

"It must be just as I thought." Mouri declared. "The killer, Suzuki-san, is you. From the very start, you and Katsuko-san had a bad relationship. And tonight, that bad relationship finally reached its boiling point. Right after that, Katsuko-san was murdered on the 2nd floor. You wrapped this towel around the murder weapon's handle to keep from leaving any fingerprints. Then, you put it in your shoe cupboard to hide it until you can dispose of it later."

"Suzuki Hidehisa-san, could you accompany me to the police station as this case's primary suspect?" Megure requested.

"It wasn't me." Suzuki protested. "I didn't do it."

Finally connecting the dots, Conan put Mouri to sleep with his tranquilizer dart. "Please wait, everyone. It's still too early to confidently say Suzuki-san is the killer. It would have been clear at a glance if I had taken into account Suzuki-san's appearance. Think back to the scene of the murder; Katsuko-san has been murdered by having one of her arteries cut and blood had been splattered all over the place. However, please take a look; Suzuki-san's sweatshirt is completely white. If he's the criminal, how could he not have blood on him?"

"Couldn't he have pretended to find the body after going to change clothes?" Megure wondered.

"If that was the case, the clothes would've been discovered." Conan pointed out. "He didn't have enough time to go and dispose of them. This is likely what happened: first, the killer pretended to me Katsuko-san and left Suzuki-san a message on the message board. This was done in order to make Suzuki-san wait in his room, thus ensuring that he wouldn't have an alibi. At the time of the murder, the killer had snuck out of the bathroom and up to the 2nd floor.

"Wait a minute, Mouri-kun." Megure spoke. "Ran-kun had already said that no one went through the corridor during the time of the murder."

"Conan." Conan responded.

"Detective Takagi." Conan came out from the table he was hiding under. "There is a big potted plant in front of the door, right? Look under it. There are traces of it having been moved, right? Try moving it over to where the marks stop. Now you can go into the corridor and close the door. Now, Ran-nee-chan, go to the refrigerator and when oji-san gives you the signal, open the refrigerator door. Now, look at Detective Takagi. Ran, open the refrigerator door." he instructed, hiding back under the table. "How about it?" he asked, both panels of glass were now shielded from view. "If it's like this, it's impossible to see Detective Takagi from where Ran was sitting. Conan told me that during the time of the murder, the refrigerator door was open like this twice. Once when Katsuko-san's cake was taken out and once when it was put back. The killer moved the plant while Ran was in the toilet and that was how they were able to get out of the bathroom without anyone knowing. There is other evidence. The killer stepped on shampoo that was spilled in the dressing room and left traces of it in the corridor as a result. Then the killer waited until the exact moment the door of the refrigerator was opened and hurried into Katsuko-san's room. Since Katsuko-san had been made to take sleeping pills, it was easy for the killer to sneak in and... then the killer put the incriminating bloody towel into Suzuki-san's show cupboard. And once the refrigerator door was open again to put Katsuko-san's cake back, the killer went back through the corridor and into the bathroom once again. Later, they returned the potted plant back to its original position when a chance arrived."

"I was the one who opened the refrigerator." Yajima noted. "That means the killer is..." she turned to Kawakami. "Yasuko-san?"

"Onee-san?" Conan started. "Did you hurt your shoulder? There's blood coming from it. That is the evidence that you went up the 2nd floor." he continued, taking on Mouri's voice again. "Take a look at the window that faces the stairs. Yasuko-san didn't want to expose herself in the window as she went up to the 2nd floor. Therefore, she stooped down as she climbed up the stairs. Her left shoulder was cut by the nail that used to keep the picture on the wall."

"Didn't you say Suzuki-san wasn't covered in the victim's blood?" Kawakami protested. "But doesn't the same go for me? I'm not covered in her blood, either."

"As soon as I saw your wound, I understood right away." Conan remarked. "Even though your shoulder was injured by the nail, your T-shirt wasn't damaged at all. Even the clothes you were wearing before weren't damaged. It's simple: after you went to the bathroom, you took off all of your clothes. Then, you went to kill Katsuko-san while you were completely naked. After killing her, you wiped away as much blood as you could with the towel in order to make sure you didn't' leave any on the floor of the corridor. All you had to do was shower and any remaining blood would be washed away. Shall we have the officers check the shower drain? Katsuko-san's blood will surely be detected."

"Tap, tap, tap, tap, all the time." Kawakami broke down. "All I ever heard every night was the sound of that person tap dancing over my head. No matter how many times I asked, she would never stop. I couldn't put up with it anymore. Then she said that..." she recalled how Kanou had mocked about how good it felt to be stomping over her head and that was the only use for someone like her.


Later that night...

"I think I can sympathize with Kawakami-san, actually." Ami swallowed her ramen, the couple were out on a late dinner date.

"Why's that?" Amuro asked, picking up a piece of cabbage roll with his chopsticks.

"Can you imagine hearing the continuous foot taps every single night?" Ami pondered, biting into one of her gyoza. "It's enough to drive any sane person into a mental breakdown."

"Thank god both of us live alone, then." Amuro chuckled.


SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.