A huge thanks and cookies all around for those who reviewed. I'll skip the chitchat and get to the chapter right away!
Disclaimer: Detective Conan is, unfortunately Gosho Aoyama's, with no disrespect.
Chapter 5
Few conversations were exchanged during the walk to the crime scene. I asked Shiho for the details for the case, but she said that she only made sure that it's impossible to be the syndicate's doing, and that she thought I would figure the rest out anyways.
I became aware of Ran's gaze on us, looking from the two of us and making me feel self-conscious. I was sure her gaze would burn a hole through the back of my head anytime now. I don't blame her, knowing what it must have looked like this morning. I looked at Shiho and saw that her expression remained indifferent, but she let her steps slow to walk beside Hakase, leaving Ran next to me, pointing out the way when necessary.
The earlier awkwardness between Ran and I evaporated as she began recounting a party that Sonoko held, inviting half their grade. Knowing Sonoko, I would bet most people on the guest list was male.
Except for her occasional mention of Conan, the conversation between Shiho and Hakase, I could almost believe that the whole APTX was only a dream I'd just woken up from.
"When can we go to Tropical Land again?" she asked suddenly, after mentioning a case that I'd solved as Conan a few months back that she thought I'd be interested in.
"Eh?" Why would she want to go there? I shuddered at the memory of seeing Gin and Vodka that day.
"You left before the fireworks and the parade started last time we were there, remember?" she said. "And the other time I was there a psychopath tried to kill me. The fireworks are supposed to be really pretty."
"I don't know…" I mumbled, not at all keen to revisit the place.
"Never mind then…" Ran murmured, looking disappointed. This caused a small panic attack on my side.
"Er… hey, you want to catch a movie or something after this case?" I offered hastily. Her expression brightened, to my relief, and began listing the movies in theater…
Shiho led us to a manor on the south side of Beika. The vine-covered front gate was opened, and many people seemed to have already gathered in front of the front door. Snow covered the roof of the building, just barely revealing the roof's original blue.
"Dad said a professor of some sorts lived here alone. I wonder what he studies…" Ran said, looking at the gargoyles and stone lizards glaring down upon us on the rooftop. The yard too was decorated with stone statues of different sizes and shapes. They made the yard look too serious to be inviting.
No footsteps lead to the back door, I noted. Though if the killer did leave footprints towards the front entrance in the snow, the crowd would have trampled it beyond recognition.
Inspector Megure emerged from the front door followed by a thin tearful woman whom I guess found the body. Immediately the crowd pushed forward. He slammed the door behind him before anyone could look inside. This caused a pile of snow to slide from the roof, hitting him squarely on the head. I laughed as he shook his hat free of snow, looking thoroughly disgruntled.
He looked up, seeing the four of us for the first time, and brightened considerably.
"Police! Civilians please keep out of the way!" He bellowed, trying to squeeze past the crowd of onlookers with little success. The inspector wasn't exactly known for being skinny. Giving up altogether, he glared menacingly at the closest person to him, who stepped back, if only for a few seconds, and waved us over impatiently.
"Sato! Takagi! Get everyone who isn't involved in the case away from the crime scene!" he said irritably to the two startled officers behind him.
"The press too, if you don't mind." I added, stepping over the yellow crime scene tapes that Takagi and Sato keiji are now trying to seal the house with.
Inspector Megure gave me a quizzical glance. "You're keen to stay out of the news lately."
I shrugged, and did not elaborate. "What's the case?"
"It looks like armed robbery. The victim was professor in Tokyo University, Professor Matsukura Korenori. His secretary, Usami Koree found the body." He scowled and the woman behind them, before adding in a low voice, "She found the need to go screaming around the neighborhood before someone finally calls us. And these people seemed to think they should at least get to see the body just because they offered to lend their cell phones to the poor woman."
I stifled a laugh as, shaking his head at how people just don't seemed to listen to the police anymore, the inspector led us inside the ornately carved doors, closing the closing it firmly behind him to stop anyone else from entering.
Chiba keiji greeted us from the front door, which he seemed to be guarding previously. He took out a notebook and asked Usami-san, the secretary, how exactly she found the body. I listened enough to learn that she had not seen the professor since she went home the previous day, but had called him to remind him of a meeting late at night.
Ran gasped when we entered the library, where the stone cold body lay. Usami-san gave a strangled wail.
I'd expected to see the forensic team examining the house and dusting for prints, but the house is surprisingly empty.
I made a quick mental scan around the room. Ancient wooden carvings, necklaces strung with colorful glass beads, and ceremonial masks lined a glass cabinet on the undamaged half of the room. On the other side, books fell out of the neat shelves on the wall, the desk knocked to the side, obvious signs of a struggle. The safe on the wall was forced opened, the metal around the lock heavily scarred. The body was slumped against the bookshelves. Dried blood clung to the victim's forehead. An African stone carving of serpents coiled around the body of a wild haired woman was neatly placed on a table by the door. It had dark red clinging to surface. Otherwise there seemed to be no visible signs of blood. An unfinished cup of coffee had fallen from the desk and stained the dusty carpet, littering the floor with shards of broken china.
The body had a gaping wound, and the blood from it covered one side of his face. It looks like the fatal blow.
"What was in the safe?" I asked.
"Only some money, and legal papers. Nothing too valuable."
"It's not just robbery. It's a murder." I said, picking the stone statue up carefully with a handkerchief.
"Do build up the suspense, none of us wants the murder to be solved anytime soon." Shiho said under her breath. I ignored her, and explained,
"The artifacts in the glass case are undamaged. If it were a robbery, there would be no reason to leave something that could easily be sold at high prices."
"True, but it's possible that the robber didn't recognize the value of these pieces." Shiho pointed out. "And carrying those outside will have made the culprit more memorable, and more likely for him to be identified later should the police asks around.
"But there are also necklaces, aren't there?" I said, "It would be easy to pawn, and small enough to be carried in a pocket."
Inspector Megure nodded, and asked Usami-san for a list of students and associates of the deceased. "I'll have Takagi check these people for their alibis as soon as I know when the victim died. Our forensic department is short staffed, they are heading over here from Haido as we speak, but until then we couldn't get an accurate time of death."
Careful as not to disturb any evidence, I examined the body. I could still feel Ran looking from me to Shiho. Her gaze made it hard to concentrate.
The victim's jaws are stiff, but although his skin is cold with death, I could still bend his fingers without difficulty. "He's been dead for about six hours." It was a rough estimate, but probably not very far off the mark.
Inspector Megure nodded, and reached for his cell phone.
"Wait. The time of death can't be that long ago." Shiho said, to everyone's surprise. She knelt beside the body, lifting the edge of the victim's shirt. Bruises covered the side the body lay on in small dark red patches.
"Postmortem lividity. If he'd been dead for over two hours, there should be more obvious signs of discoloration."
"But the body is too stiff to have been dead for less than two hours," I pointed out, mildly annoyed that I hadn't thought to check for lividity. I have to stress the fact that I was distracted.
Shiho smirked.
Although put off that she had found something I missed, I suppressed a smile. The inspector is now looking at Shiho with both admiration and annoyance. He clearly didn't like outsiders solving his case. "You are—?"
Shiho looked at me fleetingly before answering. "Shiho Miyano. I studied biochemistry and toxicology in America." She said. Obviously I was supposed to remember this, so when asked about her identity, our story would be the same. "I met Kudo-kun on a case that came to both our attentions."
She glanced at me again, and I gave a nod, confirming the story and trying to arrange my expression to look like I hadn't just heard it.
"So, why is the rigor mortis inconsistent with the lividity?" Hakase prompted, before more questions could be made.
Shiho looked at me, as if asking if I would like to explain. I looked at the body slumped on the ground. The blow to the head was fatal… wasn't it? Flipping the eyelids up—the secretary looked faint again—I saw that the victim's eyes were bloodshot. There was no sign of strangulation on the neck.
"He died of suffocation?" I said, hating the fact that it came out as a question. I was extremely annoyed to find that Shiho now wore the expression of being told that one plus one equals two from someone who had just figured it out. A vein throbbed in my temple. How can someone be this infuriating?
"I'll need to see his liver for sure, but it's likely to be a kind of neurological poison."
She glanced at the glass cabinet, and the books that had fallen from the bookshelves. "Professor Matsukura studies archeology of some kind, right?"
"Hai…South American and African cultures." Usami-san said, looking at Shiho uncertainly.
"I'm not sure, but I think it's a form of curare. It's a kind of poison used by Native Americans for poison arrows, once used as a muscle relaxant, but it's lethal when not carefully controlled, causing the muscles to seize up and thus suffocating the victim."
"Poison?" Takagi keiji interrupted. He had entered the room without our notice, his shirt rumpled and hair sticking in every direction. The crowd obviously hadn't taken kindly to being told to leave. He glanced at the smashed coffee mug, and pointed at the secretary. "So the coffee's been poisoned!?"
"No," I interrupted. Shiho shrugged and stepped back with an airy wave as if handing over the rest of the explaining. I scowled.
"The poison is inactive orally," I said. "That's how the natives hunting with it can eat without being affected by the poison."
"There are samples of tubocurarine in the university from a symposium on herbs and medicine from South America." Usami-san offered.
Upon, hearing this, the inspector ordered Sato keiji to look through the surveillance tapes at the university.
Half an hour later, the forensic team arrived, only to find that fingerprints were already collected and the carving and other pieces of evidence bagged and neatly labeled with Shiho's handwriting.
It was a straightforward case. But it took a long time cross-referencing the many people on the tapes and the list of possible suspects. We ended up with four suspects, three of them students and the other a rival professor, and lots of theories but no substantial proof.
After Shiho's display of knowledge on toxins and her forensic skill, Ran was being perfectly friendly to her. She asked about her work in America, and hearing about her stay in Hakase's house when the bomb went off, offered to take her shopping with Sonoko in the weekend. They even went to buy lunch together for the police and the rest of us when everyone was starting to get irritated by hunger and the lack of process.
It was already late afternoon when the culprit, the other professor who was jealous of the victim and wanted to lead the department. He staged a break-in to make it seem like a random robbery, but couldn't bear to smash the artifacts. The professor was knocked unconscious before being injected with poison.
I glanced at my watch. The movie Ran said she wanted to see would start in fifteen minutes, and there was still the police report.
Shiho tapped me on the shoulder. "Go ahead, Hakase and I can help with the reports. The inspector said it's alright, and I'll make sure we don't get mentioned."
"Thanks," I said gratefully. "I owe you one."
"I know," she shrugged offhandedly. "I need a new wardrobe, look up Prada's fall line. Though a handbag will do."
"Oi…" I was on the brink of coming up with a sarcastic reply, but Inspector Megure called her over. He looked so impressed earlier that I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to hire her as head of the forensic department.
Ran was sitting next to Hakase, chatting with him while staring at the tribal masks apprehensively. I smiled, knowing that she must me remembering the horror film she watched last week.
"Ran, want to get out of here?" I asked. "We should hurry if we want to get there before the movie starts."
She smiled. "Sure, let's go."
Hakase threw us a look of deep envy, as we walked past him. "Why couldn't Ai-kun find some way for us to skip out on the reports too?" I heard him mutter, then shutting up abruptly when Shiho gave him a look.
A/N: Ran Shinichi scenes ahead... pls r&r and offer ideas because I'm no good at this.
Okay, now the part where I ramble on pointlessly. I've just seen the 13th movie!! Good stuff! PM me for spoilers!!
