Chapter 28: Paradise Hunting (Edited) Could this person be her? ...
The group quickly arrived at Yokohama Marine University.
Sure enough, because of the registration season, Yokohama Marine University has recently opened to the public and anyone can enter.
They first went to the bulletin board on campus to see if they could find any information about the CRY club.
Lin Xi saw a man there.
This man is about 185cm tall, with wheat-colored skin, light blonde hair, gray-blue eyes, and is wearing casual clothes. He stands out among the college students coming and going.
Seeing him was within Lin Xi's expectations. She pondered for a moment how to greet him, and finally decided to use the simplest way to attract his attention.
"Hello," she said, noticing the bracelet on the blond agent's hand. "Are you also a detective assigned to investigate here?"
The blond man turned around and gave a polite and sunny smile.
"This lady too?"
"We all are," Lin Xi said. "It's amazing, isn't it? We were all given the same codeword, but we didn't bring the detectives together to solve the case from the beginning. How inefficient."
The blond man gave her a scrutinizing look, the kind of look that was so expressionless and professional that anyone not paying attention would mistake it for a kind observation.
"Hello," he said. "I'm Toru Amuro, a private investigator. I'm in a similar situation to you—"
He flicked his wrist, indicating the bracelet on his hand to the others. "I think we have a common mystery to solve."
They exchanged information for a while. Amuro Toru's experience was similar to the others, except that he arrived earlier, so his progress was slightly faster than theirs.
Lin Xi found that she was not noticed particularly. Instead, Amuro Toru was full of curiosity about the only child present - especially when he discovered that Conan was smart and sharp, and his IQ was not inferior to that of adults.
"Is this kid also a detective?" asked Toru Amuro.
They found the address of the CRY club on the notice board and were walking towards it.
"Yes!" Edogawa Conan smiled broadly and answered crisply, "I am Detective Edogawa Conan!"
Lin Xi tightened his expression and turned his gaze elsewhere.
Didn’t this kid notice that his tone just now was completely different from usual?
It was suddenly clamped up, what an exaggerated acting.
Amuro Toru's expression also became subtle.
"Actually, Conan-kun is Mr. Maori's assistant." Lin Xi saw this and reached out to hold Conan's hand. "He's the famous 'Sleeping Kogoro'! Don't look at his small size, he's actually very smart. Mr. Maori must have given him a task to supervise us in solving the case!"
"Isn't that right, Conan-kun?"
Conan: "Ahaha, yeah..."
Hattori Heiji: "..."
Kogoro Mori is often used as a shield.
Kaito Kidd: "..."
How could the guy who called out his real name right away not know the identity of Edogawa Conan?
He doesn't believe it.
"Is that so?" Amuro Toru seemed to really believe it. "The kid is really great."
Lin Xi touched Conan's head proudly.
The three of them arrived at the door of the Crime Research Society, where a CRY nameplate was hung.
Hattori Heiji knocked on the door, but no one answered, so he turned the doorknob.
"Locked," he said.
"Let me try," Toru Amuro stepped forward, took out a thin steel wire, inserted it into the keyhole, turned it gently a few times, and the door opened.
Lin Xi clapped her hands: "Great! Amuro-kun won't have to worry about finding a job in the future."
Conan's mouth twitched: "Hey, hey..."
You mean that if he can't be a detective, he can be a pickpocket, right?
"I mean, if Amuro-kun doesn't want to be a detective in the future, he can always become a locksmith." Lin Xi glanced at Conan, "Did Conan-kun just think of something very rude?"
Conan: "I don't have any..."
They went inside.
The metal cabinet in the room was filled with files, and a row of photo frames hung above the photo wall next to it.
"Hmm, are these photos of their club's various activities?"
Lin Xi leaned over and took a photo with her cell phone.
"Ms. Lin, is the Miss Shimizu you just mentioned in the photo?" asked Kaito Kid.
"Yeah, she is." Lin Xi pointed to one of the photos. "Look, that's her. A very beautiful girl, huh? She's one of the club's founders. I heard her current president is also a club member like her... Huh."
Her fingers moved to the face of a long-haired man, and she suddenly hesitated.
"What's wrong, Sister Lin?" Conan asked.
"I've seen this person before." Lin Xi frowned. "When I was having dinner with Miss Qingshui before, this person was sitting behind me... So they are from the same club? I thought Miss Qingshui didn't know him."
"But the person in the photo is standing next to her." Conan said, "They are so close, it's impossible not to know each other."
Amuro Toru stood beside Lin Xi. From his angle, he could clearly see the slight disgust on the girl's face.
That expression reminded Toru Amuro of the time he'd disguised himself as a staff member and sneaked into a restaurant to gather intelligence, and seen a fly fall into a large pot of soup in the kitchen. His expression then must have been similar: disgust tinged with regret, a sense of helplessness at seeing food being wasted.
Toru Amuro recognized that the person Lin Xi was pointing at was Shoji Nishio, the person who was supposed to meet "Samurai 3" that afternoon.
The Mineta clan had been acting suspiciously recently, and Public Security had asked him to see if he could catch them while he was handling their affairs. Port cities like Yokohama, convenient for smuggling, were considered Yakuza strongholds, and the Mineta clan's headquarters were also in Yokohama. Using his intelligence-gathering mission in Yokohama as an excuse, Toru Amuro focused on the Mineta clan and uncovered their internal drug trafficking routes.
If it were just smuggling, they'd turn a blind eye to it to maintain balance, but this was unacceptable. Amuro Toru, working as a bartender and intelligence dealer at a bar in the Mineta clan's territory, spent a month finally finding a somewhat useful clue. He was about to follow this clue deeper and uncover the Mineta clan's entire drug trafficking network when someone disrupted his plans.
The man discovered the bug he had placed on Samurai 3, so he spoke to him directly—no, spoke unilaterally—saying that he wanted to cooperate with him to investigate the Minetoda Group together.
Oh, he doesn't need it.
But there is only one person in the world who would talk to him like this.
Toru Amuro stared at her long black hair and eyes that were like golden honey.
Could this person be her?
Toru Amuro knew very well who issued the commission - after receiving the clues provided by that person, he quickly found out the ins and outs of the 4.4 robbery, and also knew that Ito Suehiko became blind after a car accident and was taken to the Red Castle Hotel by Soichiro Fukayama for recuperation.
He knew which detectives Ito Suehiko had commissioned, and Lin Xi was definitely not among them. In other words, this person had suddenly appeared, and by chance, he had a friend named Shimizu Reiko and had met Nishio Masaharu.
Based on Toru Amuro's understanding of that person, if she wants to get involved in something, she will definitely make herself deeply involved in a dramatic way. Disguising herself as an ordinary person to participate in the case, and then jumping out after everything is revealed, is what she would do.
"Is there anything special about this person? Miss Lin doesn't seem to like him very much." he asked.
"Well……"
Lin Xi was about to speak when a noisy sound came from outside the door.
A man and a woman came in from the doorway. Seeing them, they were surprised: "Huh? Who are you?"
The two men were carrying bags and looked like college students from Yokohama Marine University.
"We are students who are planning to apply to this school," Amuro Toru said with a smile, "so we came to visit in advance."
"Oh, I see," the girl said with a smile, "Then if you get admitted here, you must join our club!"
"Of course."
"Hey, big sister," Conan suddenly became childish and pointed at a photo frame on the table: "Why is that big brother's photo frame placed there alone?"
"Huh?"
"There's an empty photo frame at the top of the row. My brothers and sisters must have taken it down individually. Why did they do that?"
"Well..." The girl and the boy looked at each other.
Conan blinked his eyes, looking like a completely curious child.
They looked towards the table. The framed photo on the table looked familiar; it was the man standing on the other side of Shimizu Reiko in the photo Lin Xi had pointed to.
"This is actually a photo of our first club president," the girl began. "Actually, our first club president, Suehiko Ito, and first-generation club members Masaharu Nishio and Reiko Shimizu all disappeared a week ago. Since all three of them work for the same company and are the founders of CRY, the police investigating their disappearance came to the club to question us and see if we knew anything. The photo frame might have been taken down during the police questioning, and it hasn't been put back yet."
"Missing?" Lin Xi frowned, "Miss Qingshui is missing?"
"Hey, you know Senior Qingshui?" The girl was a little surprised.
"Well, she's my friend." Lin Xi said, "Can you ask when she disappeared? Maybe I can provide some clues..."
"Of course, of course." The girl was quite happy to see that she might be able to help with the disappearance of her seniors. "Ms. Shimizu and President Ito both disappeared on April 14th, which is... five days ago, Monday!"
"Eh, April 14th? Miss Shimizu sent me a message that day."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Lin Xi took out her flip phone and opened the text messages between her and Shimizu Reiko. "She happened to invite me to dinner nearby that day, and we had lunch together. The rice bowl there was really delicious... ahem, after that, I took the train back to Tokyo. In the evening, I found out that she had forgotten to give me a gift. We had agreed to meet next time, but she disappeared. What a surprise..."
Amuro Toru glanced at her.
You say it's a surprise, but in reality, it's not a surprise at all, right?
"So, on the night of April 14th, Ms. Shimizu sent a message to Ms. Lin," Kaito Kid confirmed. "After that, there was no further contact. Is that correct?"
"It seemed even earlier than that," the girl recalled. "Because the three seniors all worked for the same company, and Ito was the president. They had a meeting that afternoon, but none of them showed up. They couldn't get through to them on the phone, so the company thought something was wrong and called the police."
"But when no one else could get in touch, Miss Qingshui sent me a message." Lin Xi frowned. "So, does it seem like there's something else behind the gift she's going to give me?"
"Sister Lin, are you talking about that Dorayaki doll?" Conan laughed dryly. He had just read the text messages between Shimizu Reiko and Lin Xi and didn't think they were related to the case: "I don't think so..."
"But there might be something inside?" Lin Xi tilted her head, "Like a note with a password, a USB drive containing confidential documents, or a mysterious little pill..."
"That's too much like a spy movie," Conan complained, "and who would put important secrets in a Dorayaki doll?"
"Ahem." Amuro Toru interrupted them with a cough and said with a smile: "Since they all work in the same company, shouldn't we go to the company and take a look?"
The few of them looked at each other and agreed with Toru Amuro's suggestion, so they politely said goodbye to the students in the club and left the club activity room.
Lin Xi was very interested in CRY. Before leaving, he added the girl's LINE and said that if he was admitted to this school, he would definitely join their club... The girl was coaxed into smiling by the words "senior" and she even gave Lin Xi a CRY flyer that they had made and printed themselves.
Conan watched from the side and finally understood why she, who was studying at a university in Tokyo, knew people from Yokohama Marine College.
He has great social skills and a friendly and cute face. Who would refuse to make friends with such a person?
The group walked out onto the quiet streets, and Hattori Heiji got to the point first: "So, we've figured out the CRY code. Now we need to report it to the client, right?"
"Our wristbands have tracking devices, so he should have known we found the club." Amuro Toru said, "There's nothing strange about a campus club, but the three people missing from the club are suspicious."
"The masks, clothing, and equipment we found in the abandoned hotel belonged to three people," Kidd said. "Is the client suggesting that these three people are the perpetrators of the armored car robbery?"
"But that happened on April 4th. If the murderers were those three people, since they were still working in the company after the robbery and the police did not investigate them, why did they disappear ten days later?" Conan Edogawa asked.
"Anyway, let's go to the company first?" Lin Xi said.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
