Chapter 46 No Way to Enter the Underground

If the prisoner really intends to carry out the plan according to the notice, then there should be one last pair of bombs.

Initially, the police believed the bomb was in a crowded underground public place like a subway, but a thorough search did not find it.

Jing Guang offered a slightly different perspective: "The prisoner is currently wanted nationwide and cannot return home. Moreover, judging from the fact that he chose to stay under a bridge the second time, the prisoner is very likely currently homeless. Places like under bridges and basements are suitable for sleeping at night. When I was homeless, I also liked to find such quiet and warm places."

"Combined with the content of the notice, the place that could cause significant damage by explosion and fire is not necessarily a public place, but more likely an underground gas pipeline. It is a well-hidden place, and the criminals have enough time to make the bomb."

Amuro thought this idea was correct and told the class monitor and the others.

He originally didn't want to get directly involved in the case. But when he first started working at Poirot, he heard that Conan had left early in the morning carrying a large suitcase.

Amuro couldn't sit still any longer and immediately asked for leave to go find someone.

"That box might contain bomb disposal tools. Does this kid really want to handle this himself?"

Amuro knew that he had secretly planted a bugging device when Conan went to see Matsuda last time.

As the saying goes, "an eye for an eye," Conan's gift to Matsuda was a modified version of the one he had inserted into the puppy two years ago.

Last night, Matsuda and Hagiwara figured out how to debunk the bomb. It seems Conan feels he has mastered enough theoretical knowledge and is ready to put it to good use.

"Can you please stop running around at a time like this!"

Amuro thought to himself irritably, and couldn't help but regret why he hadn't installed a transmitter or something similar beforehand for tracking and locating the target.

The target is a gas pipeline near a Winter Olympics landmark building.

Even so, the search scope is still too large.

Amuro could only acquiesce to the fact that Conan's search was aligned with his own, hoping to find the person before the little detective found the bomb.

After marking a few crosses on the map, Amuro headed to the next candidate location, only to feel an unusual tremor from the ground.

Although it was only for a brief moment, he still managed to capture it keenly.

Earthquake? Or explosion?

Since the earthquake bureau hasn't issued any announcements, it can only be the latter.

Amuro ran out of the car to check the situation, only to find that the entrance was blocked.

"That child...couldn't be...already?"

Amuro panicked and tentatively called out twice, but no one answered.

He immediately notified his squad leader that a bomb had been discovered and called an ambulance.

The entrance was completely blocked, and Amuro couldn't get in at all.

Furthermore, he was unsure whether the underground pipes were damaged, so he dared not make any rash moves.

So Amuro decided to take a detour and go down through another entrance to check the situation.

However, the moment he landed, he felt an unusual sensation on the sole of his shoe.

He didn't have time to think, and instinctively wrapped his body into a ball and rolled several times on the ground.

At the same time, I heard an explosion, and clods of earth fell on me.

The scene repeated itself; the entrance on this side was also blocked.

"Damn it! We actually fell for their trap!"

Amuro got up from the ground and the first thing he did was turn on his small flashlight to check if the pipes were intact.

After some investigation, he was relieved to find no gas leak and breathed a sigh of relief.

Amuro assessed his current situation. He had no tools to dig or chisel through the wall, making it difficult to get out on his own.

"This is truly a situation where there's nowhere to turn!"

Amuro sighed. Fortunately, he had already passed the message to the squad leader, and the rescue team should arrive soon.

"Maybe if Conan were in the same situation as me, I could find him to huddle together for warmth?"

With that thought in mind, Amuro began to walk along the pipes deeper underground.

He soon noticed lights flashing in the distance, which excited him so much that he quickened his pace.

However, when Amuro stepped into the light source, he couldn't help but gasp:

This road is blocked!

It wasn't that the plumber had put up any signs; rather, the dense network of electrical wires and the mountain of scrap metal in front of him clearly told him that he couldn't pass through here.

The final bomb is right in front of us.

If it explodes, the hundreds-of-meters-long pipeline will instantly catch fire, sending everything above ground either to heaven or hell.

After seeing the criminal's design drawings, Hagiwara jokingly called them "double yellow bullets".

The previous two bombs were separate, so they weren't very clear. This time, Amuro finally had a direct impression.

There was a "wall" in front of us, with pipes running through it.

The bomb itself is located in a concentric circle tightly surrounding the pipe, and there is another bomb mirrored on the other side of the wall.

The wall wasn't completely airtight, but the gaps were so narrow that even a child like Conan couldn't squeeze through.

"What an ugly bomb!"

Amuro complained.

His message to Matsuda indicated that he needed remote guidance from an expert.

Matsuda readily agreed and even brought Hagiwara into the group video chat.

"It seems we can only solve this between the two of us, Conan-kun." Amuro saw the little detective through the crack in the wall, and he believed that the other had also seen him.

"Looking back, it was a wise decision for you to bring your own bomb disposal tools."

However, Conan coldly replied, "So you really came."

Amuro sensed something was off about the other person's tone and said, "Don't worry, I've already called the police. The police and ambulance will be here soon. But since you brought tools, wouldn't it be better to deal with this trouble sooner?"

"How does Mr. Furuya intend to handle this?"

Upon hearing this title, Amuro was completely stunned.

"What happened? Did Kazami let something slip?"

Seeing Amuro's surprised expression, Conan said, "Inspector Hagiwara told me that your real name is Rei Furuya, right?"

Solids transmit sound better than gases, and it was clearly audible deep in the quiet underground pipes. The little detective's voice reached Matsuda and Hagiwara's ears without missing a single word.

Hagiwara, who had just sneaked out of the archives to join the group chat, was completely bewildered when he heard this: "Kid, you can't just pin the blame on me like that!"

As Amuro hesitated about whether to turn on the speakerphone, Conan continued to explain, "It was Senso-nee who told me. That day, I went to Inspector Hagiwara's house and happened to run into his sister. As soon as I entered, I saw Mr. Furuya's photo in a very conspicuous place in the living room."

"Hagiwara, why did you put my photo in the living room?" Amuro asked, puzzled.

Matsuda, his gossip-loving spirit ignited, exclaimed, "Hagi, you better confess!"

"No! I didn't!" Hagiwara cried out, solemnly clarifying that the only photos in his living room besides those of his family were of Matsuda.

Once the entertainment value was high, the young detective calmly explained, "Actually, that's a photo of Officer Matsuda and Officer Hagiwara. There's just a blond-haired figure in the corner that looks a lot like you."

"You can recognize that?!"

Hagiwara was filled with remorse and secretly resolved to cut Furuya out of that photo when he got home.

"In that photo, Officer Hagiwara is wearing a police academy uniform. So I asked Chisato if she remembered a blond man who was one of her brother's classmates?"

"My sister Chisato told me that there was a blonde mixed-race person named Furuya Rei. She also said that she was very impressed because her brother said that person was the top student in the police academy."

Amuro shook his head and sighed, saying, "I never imagined that such a mistake would reveal your identity! Fine, I admit defeat, but I hope you won't mention this to anyone else, because it's causing me a lot of trouble."

"Does a dying man care about such empty fame?" Conan retorted.

"Huh? Who's dying?"

“You!” Conan replied, a little annoyed.

"Why?" Amuro was confused, and Hagiwara and Matsuda were no better off.

Conan gritted his teeth and calmly said, "I've always believed in the inherent goodness of humanity. Evil doesn't take root, sprout, or spread without a reason. There are many motives for crime, some straightforward, some more subtle. But even indiscriminate killing always has a reason behind it. Perhaps it's domestic violence in childhood, or perhaps it's an unexpected disaster in adulthood. So, where does Mr. Furuya's crime originate?"

Amuro frowned and remained silent, thinking: Fortunately, this bomb won't take too long to disarm. I'll just listen to your nonsense!

Otherwise, I doubt this kid would have cooperated so readily.

"Mr. Furuya seems to have done a lot of bad things over the years, but they can be summarized into only two categories: arson and hostage-taking. I think this is not a coincidence; there must be some reason for it."

"Because Mr. Furuya was once the top student in the police academy, I think there must be some stories about you circulating among the later police academy students. I went to ask Officer Takagi, and sure enough, I found some clues."

"Oh?" Amuro suddenly became interested and was curious about what kind of person the younger generation described him to be.

"Officer Takagi told me about a widely circulated case. Although he wasn't sure if the protagonist was the top student at the police academy, I felt it matched Mr. Furuya's situation quite well. Officer Takagi said that a few police academy students from that year found a fugitive. But the criminal kidnapped a little girl as a hostage and even tried to commit suicide by taking the police academy students down with him. Everyone else ran away when they saw this, but one student rushed into the fire to try and rescue the hostage."

"The final outcome is debated: some say the student and the hostage died together, some say the hostage died and the student jumped from the building and was maimed, some say everyone survived but the student was held fully responsible and expelled from school... I still don't understand why the student who saved the hostage was held responsible in the last version. But I think this is also what you've always been confused about, right? From then on, you stopped saving people and instead stood on the opposite side of the police. All your crimes were just subconscious imitations of that criminal at the time."

Amuro fell into deep thought, while Hagiwara and Matsuda also tried to search the deepest corners of their memories: "Did this really happen?"

If we have to talk about a similar case, then it can only be the case of Moriichi Togashi, the murderer who killed Kei's parents.

However, the details are so different!

Jing was the one who rushed into the fire. But the hostages had already been rescued, and Jing went back to rescue the prisoners. Besides, the other four didn't abandon their companions and run away, did they?

It's true that Jing jumped from the building, but they caught him with their class flag from the school sports meet. He was perfectly fine and not injured at all, let alone crippled!

What I find most incomprehensible is their expulsion from school. These five people caused so much trouble, yet they weren't expelled.

If I had to put it that way, could it be that the story of Furuya cleaning up while everyone else slept soundly was embellished to make him take full responsibility?

Amuro felt he had seen enough rumors and bizarre statements since the bombing.

But he never expected that he would be the one to be affected in the end!

Amuro was speechless for a moment, as there were too many points to criticize and he didn't know where to begin refuting them.

However, this silence led Conan to mistakenly believe that his reasoning was correct and that the other party was speechless.

The young detective peered through the crack into the other person's eyes and calmly said, "Let's talk, Mr. Furuya."