Chapters 3586 and 3598: [Invitation]

"Could it be that someone killed Miss Mika and then lay there observing from below, or perhaps they set up some kind of trap?" Conan stroked his chin.

"But what's the point? Besides, Miss Mika was strangled to death. It's hard to make a point about such a death from such a distance."

"Of course, it's also possible that the traces there have nothing to do with the current murder case, and that someone just lay on the rooftop sunbathing—there are all kinds of people in Tokyo, and it's not uncommon for someone to lie on the rooftop for a while."

Thinking this, Conan shifted his gaze away from that spot and continued to look in other directions.

...

Following the direction the shopkeeper's wife had been looking, Conan looked carefully for a while and saw an ordinary street.

As time went by, there were a few more people on the street than when they first arrived.

Pedestrians moved toward their workplaces, some looking energetic and others yawning. Apart from the pedestrians, there were only occasional cars passing by and bags of garbage waiting to be collected.

"Seems normal," Conan muttered to himself. "Speaking of garbage bags, it's easy for a murder weapon to get mixed in with those... But what exactly is the murder weapon?"

"It's a clothes hanger, isn't it?"

A voice came from behind him, answering his question in a friendly manner: "The yellow coat on the sofa and the blue dress on the floor were just picked up from the dry cleaners. The yellow coat still has a hanger on it, but the hanger on the dress is missing."

Conan: "?!"

He jolted awake and turned around, only to see Jiang Xia walking towards him. The fake elementary school student's expression twitched instantly: "I was just talking to myself, who asked you?!"

"Ahem, yes! That's what I think too!" Conan took a deep breath, tried to compose his expression, and pretended that the person opposite him was just Hattori Heiji, whose thoughts were in sync with his own:

"If it were a clothes hanger, it would solve the strange ligature mark on the victim's neck—unlike a thin rope, a clothes hanger is harder, and using it as a murder weapon would indeed leave a ligature mark only on the front of the neck."

"In addition, the blue stuff under the deceased's fingernail is easy to understand - the color of the clothes hanger often matches the clothes, so she must have torn off a small piece of paint from the clothes hanger when she was struggling."

Just then, a commotion came from downstairs.

"Hmm?" Conan looked down and saw a garbage truck driving along the street and stopping next to a garbage collection point.

Two staff members got out of the car and bent down to throw bags of trash into the vehicle.

Conan suddenly realized something was wrong and cried out, "Oh no!"

He jumped up and ran into the building, rushing inside in the blink of an eye and then running downstairs.

Jiang Xia stood on the rooftop, looked down at the car, and turned to leave.

...

Extremely far away.

Behind a pair of cleverly concealed telescopes.

A figure whose legs had gone numb from squatting finally let out a silent, cold laugh.

"We finally found the murder weapon in the garbage bag."

The bomb demon sneered, "Such a simple thing, and the 'famous detective' took so long to figure it out. Humph, I knew none of these pretty boys had any real skills."

"He dares to steal my headlines with such little skill. I'll choose him as the sacrifice in a few days—once this detective dies, all the fame he painstakingly cultivated will become my stepping stone."

Yesterday, in search of a suitable location for a preheated explosion, the bomber wandered aimlessly around Tokyo.

While strolling through this area, he casually glanced around and coincidentally spotted a strange-looking middle-aged woman.

A middle-aged woman rushed out of the apartment carrying a twisted, deformed blue coat hanger. After looking around, she ran to a bag of trash and forcefully stuffed the hanger inside.

After the middle-aged woman finished stuffing the clothes rack and ran away in a panic, the bomber came to the opposite side of the building and quietly began to observe each room.

Soon, he saw a young woman lying on the ground in the window on the third floor.

"A murder case?"

The bomber was initially furious, with a vague premonition that he was about to lose the headline again. But then, he suddenly realized something, and a sinister smile crept across his face.

The middle-aged woman was flustered just now, and the way she disposed of the murder weapon was simply by stuffing the clothes hanger into a garbage bag... Such a stupid murderer clearly has poor mental fortitude, and the police will definitely notice something is wrong soon.

In other words, the police will follow the trail and search for nearby garbage bags.

—If that's the case, then why doesn't he just stuff the bomb into all the nearby garbage bags, so that when the police are collecting the garbage bags for inspection, he can detonate it and turn those stupid cops into a sea of ​​fire?

Let's get right to it.

The bomb-wielder had gathered a bunch of stable remote-controlled bombs and, in the dead of night, came to this neighborhood and, with a few quick movements, stuffed one into each bag.

After planting the seeds, looking at the bombs scattered all over the street, the Bomb Demon wiped away his sweat with a satisfied smile, like a farmer who had worked hard all day, and prepared to leave.

But after driving for a while, he suddenly remembered something and paused slightly.

—What if the body is discovered too late, or the police are too slow to think and by the time they finally remember to search the garbage bags, the garbage bags have already been taken away?

In that case, he'll have no choice but to detonate the garbage truck or the garbage station.

...This is so embarrassing!

"How about... we take those bombs back and plant them somewhere else?"

The thought flashed through his mind, but after glancing back at the garbage bags scattered all over the street, the bomber silently dismissed it after a moment of silence.

He's already rummaged through the trash once, and he doesn't want to do it a second time.

"By the way, isn't that high school detective named Jiang Xia supposed to be pretty amazing?" The Bomb Demon sneered.

"They solved so many cases, yet they managed to squeeze my sensational explosion out of the news... Since that's the case, let's find a way to bring him over and let him find the clue of the garbage bag."

"At that time, he will be sent to heaven with a 'boom!' along with the police who are rummaging through the garbage bags."

Imagining that wonderful scene, the bomber's lips curled up higher and higher: "Even if he was lucky enough not to rummage through the trash and avoid the explosion, as the one who suggested looking for the trash bags, he is undoubtedly the murderer who killed that group of police officers! -- I want to see how this infamous guy will ever make the news again."

With a series of sinister laughs, the bomber found the detective's office, left an anonymous invitation under the cover of night, and left without a trace.

...

The next morning, when Jiang Xia and his team began going through the case-solving process.

Amuro Detective Agency.

A detective agency owner took out his key and was about to open the door when he suddenly noticed a flat envelope on the ground.

"?"

He picked up the envelope, examined it for a moment, and then casually tore it open.