Chapters 3578 and 3590: [The FBI's Silencing]

"Heiji."

Hattori Heiji was asking curiously when Hattori Heizo's authoritative voice suddenly came from behind him.

The superintendent of police looked at his son with a strange gaze, and was about to say something when he was interrupted by Mrs. Hattori.

The elegant lady calmly said to her son, "Let's eat first."

"Oh." Although he really wanted to continue talking to Conan on the phone, Heiji Hattori didn't dare to say anything in front of his father's dark face, so he hung up the phone and went to continue eating.

The family sat at the dining table and ate in silence for a while. Suddenly, Mrs. Hattori said, "Don't do anything against the rules. You're not old enough yet."

Hattori Heiji: "Oh."

After subconsciously responding, Hattori Heiji suddenly froze, recalling what his mother had said.

He jumped up, his face flushed: "What were you thinking?!"

Hattori Heizo slammed down his chopsticks.

"..." Hattori Heiji silently sat back down, weakly changing his tone: "...What are you thinking?"

Mrs. Hattori smiled and said, "Alright, let's eat—honey, you've been through this too, haven't you? Be gentle with Heiji."

Hattori Heizo snorted and picked up his chopsticks again.

The atmosphere among the family was tense... but they continued eating in a cheerful and harmonious manner.

...

Conan had no idea that he had inadvertently tricked his friend again.

He slept soundly without any guilt and got up early the next morning, planning to go to the hairdresser's house with Ran Mouri to ask about the details of the comics.

Coincidentally, Ran Mouri thought the same thing.

"Jiang Xia!"

Worried that she might miss some important details, Ran Mouri specifically asked Xia Jiang to go with her.

Sonoko Suzuki was there too, of course. Normally, she would never want to get up this early, but now, things were all connected to "Jiang Xia," "FBI," and "pornographic comics"—this morning, she didn't even need an alarm clock; she had already sprung up in bed and set off full of fighting spirit.

"I must find out as many details as possible!" On the way to Mitsui Mika's house, Suzuki Sonoko carefully made her plans:

"It would be great if there were surveillance cameras, but after all, Ms. Judy is an FBI agent. Since she disguised herself when throwing the comics, she must have avoided the cameras... Sigh, what a pity."

Ran Mouri sighed, "It's a pity that Mika doesn't have the habit of taking pictures casually. If she had filmed the scene, we could have taken that video to Jodie-sensei... or Inspector Megure."

Conan was worried for Jodie's innocence: "There's no need to call the police. She's an adult, and reading those comics isn't illegal. Although..."

It is indeed a bit strange.

The mini detective stroked his chin, lost in thought.

...

Mika Mitsui's residence is not in the luxurious city center, but rather in the suburbs.

The streets were quite quiet early in the morning, with few vehicles and even fewer pedestrians.

Besides the four of them, only a few crows hopped around in the treetops and on the streetlights, and occasionally a few would fly down to the ground, scavenging for the trash that humans had thrown out.

Ran Mouri stretched in the cool morning air. Following the address given by Mika Mitsui, she led her classmates astray for a while, but eventually found the Mitsui family's house by showing the address to Emi.

"You can get lost on such a wide street, Ran, you really are..." Suzuki Sonoko, who had wandered around twice for nothing, patted her shoulder helplessly and said, "Next time we go out to play, please don't wander off by yourself again."

Ran Mouri smiled sheepishly and pressed the doorbell of the Mitsui family's house.

After a few ringing sounds, there was no response from inside the door.

"Hmm?" Sonoko Suzuki pressed the button a few more times. "Why isn't anyone coming to open it? She didn't forget she was going to cut your hair, did she?"

Ran shook her head, somewhat worried: "Mika has a very good memory. She can remember the appointment time and preferences of each client. Moreover, she is always punctual. She shouldn't cancel without a reason."

Conan noticed her worry and joked, "It's probably because the store manager gave her too much work, and she was busy preparing to change jobs, so she was too tired and didn't get up on time—otherwise, it couldn't have been that Ms. Judy silenced her, could it?"

"?!"

The bloody word "silence" triggered the already tense nerves of the two high school girls.

Sonoko Suzuki's heart skipped a beat as she thought of other people who, at first glance, seemed not to be home but were actually dead: "Could it be..."

She instinctively reached out and turned the doorknob, then her heart sank as she realized: the door wasn't locked.

"Let me see." Jiang Xia walked to the frozen Suzuki Sonoko and opened the door.

The door was wide open, and instead of the bloody corpses I had imagined, there was a clean and tidy living room.

Conan smiled and was about to speak when he suddenly noticed something: "There's someone on the floor of that room!"

"On the ground?" The two high school girls looked at the glass door and, through the transparent glass at the bottom of the door, they saw a face with wide-open eyes.

"Ah—!!" The two were startled and simultaneously pulled out their phones.

Jiang Xia followed Conan, who had once again illegally entered the house, and ran into that room.

Pushing open the half-closed door, a young woman lay motionless on the ground, with a dark bluish-black ligature mark on her neck.

Conan ran over, checked the situation, and then said somewhat blankly, "She was strangled to death."

The joke I made... came true?

...

Before long, a line of police cars arrived, their flashing lights coming to a stop in front of the apartment building.

On a distant rooftop, a pair of eyes watched the police officers file out of their vehicles, a cruel smile silently spreading across their faces.

In front of the apartment diagonally below.

Officer Takagi had just gotten out of the car when he suddenly sneezed.

"Did you catch a cold?" Sato Miwako glanced at him and also raised her hand to touch her own arm. "I suddenly feel a chill too."

Officer Takagi rubbed his nose: "It's probably because of the recent drop in temperature. I hope I don't catch a cold or fever, otherwise I'll have to go to the hospital to accompany Inspector Megure..."

The two policemen chatted casually but didn't forget their work.

They and their men busied themselves at the scene, and soon arrived before Jiang Xia with some intelligence.

"The victim was Mika Mitsui, 24 years old, who lived in room 301. Before her death, she was a hairdresser at 'Midori Beauty Salon' in the arch bridge ward of Beikacho."

"Judging from the degree of corneal opacity, she had been dead for 10 to 13 hours. The cause of death was asphyxiation. Considering the marks on her neck, she was likely strangled, but..."

Looking at the corpse on the ground, Miwako Sato gestured with some confusion to the side of the neck: "A ligature mark of about 5 millimeters, probably from a thin rope or something—but strangely, there are no ligature marks on the sides or back, this mark only appears on the front of the neck."