Chapter 385: Experienced Huiyuan Ai (Combined Chapter)
"!" The three children didn't dare to make a sound. They withdrew their hands suddenly, moved closer and closer, and huddled together skillfully. They might have instinctively felt that this way the area they would be beaten would be smaller.
Jiang Xia looked at them silently for a while, then looked away.
Of course he didn't beat the kid, after all, the kid didn't have any murderous intent... He'll just keep a note of it and take on more of their cases in the future.
…
Next to her, Toyama Kazuha, who had stepped on a human skull, gradually recovered from her shock. She had seen corpses with Hattori Heiji before, so her resistance was stronger than that of ordinary people. Now that she suddenly encountered a skeleton, she subconsciously looked towards Hattori Heiji...but she didn't find it.
...Oh, he's still in Spider Mansion, concentrating on investigating the case.
Yuanshan Heye's frightened eyes turned into half-moon eyes in an instant. For some reason, he had a lot of complaints in his heart, but he felt that the scene was not appropriate, so he swallowed them back silently.
Eventually, her attention returned to the present.
Fortunately, there is a reliable detective nearby.
Yuanshan Heye moved closer to Jiang Xia and asked in a low voice: "What's the matter with these bones?"
Jiang Xia borrowed the vision of a ghost, so his vision was very clear even in the middle of the night.
He waved the flashlight around, finally letting the aperture stop at a certain point, and said as he observed:
"It should be human bones. Lime is sprinkled next to them. Lime absorbs water and releases heat, which can accelerate the decay of corpses and shorten the time it takes to become bones."
In other words, there are heavy traces of human intervention.
Rob subconsciously asked, "Murder?"
"It's very likely." Jiang Xia was not interested in analyzing these things while standing in the wilderness. He wanted to go see the ghost first.
After observing for a while, he walked to a flat stone with a diameter of more than 30 centimeters next to it: "It seems that there are signs of being moved here..."
As he said this, he squatted down and lifted the stone with force.
I originally thought that there would be things like scorpions, ants, centipedes, etc. underneath.
But it didn't happen... Maybe it's because the seasons change so irregularly that the fragile insects find it difficult to adapt.
This made Jiang Xia feel a lot more comfortable.
He asked Rob to take a few photos, then he found the gloves he had brought with him and picked up the object that was pressed under the flat stone.
——A mottled ring and a crushed cigarette case. In addition, there were some scattered cigarettes nearby.
Jiang Xia opened the cigarette box and poured some into his hands.
Six cigarettes fell into his palm through his gloves, two of which were torn in the middle, four long and two short.
...a very typical death message.
I don't know how the victims had a sudden flash of inspiration before they died and thought of these things...
Huihara Ai squatted beside Jiang Xia holding a flashlight to help him light the way.
When she saw the ring in Jiang Xia's hand, she was slightly startled - there were a few letters engraved on the inside of the ring, ETSUKO to ASAO.
Etsuko to Asao
"This may be the wedding ring that Miss Nonomiya Etsuko gave to her fiancé Mr. Kawano Masao." Huihara Ai whispered:
"Ms. Nonomiya is a guest at the hotel we are staying at. I heard that she came here with Mr. Kono a year ago. After the two had a big fight, Kono left the hotel alone and disappeared.
"For the past year, there has been no news from Mr. Kono, until last week, when he suddenly sent out several invitations, inviting the recipients to come to the hotel here.
"Ms. Nonomiya came here immediately after receiving the letter, but she never saw anyone..."
...And now, there is a skeleton at the foot of the mountain, and next to the skeleton is Masao Kouno's ring.
It seems that about a year ago, the people that Nonomiya Etsuko and others were already gone.
Haibara Ai sighed in her heart, looked up at the starry sky for a while, and felt that she had encountered a sad story.
Then she turned to Jiang Xia and asked quietly, "Should we call the police?"
If it were any other time, she would have already called the police skillfully.
But now, Jiang Xia is here too. And Huihara Ai always feels that Jiang Xia is not so innocent sometimes... So she thinks she should try to restrain herself from calling the police and ask Jiang Xia's opinion first.
Jiang Xia nodded.
Then he hesitated and said, "But this place..."
Before he could finish, Yuanshan Heye's disappointed voice came: "No signal."
Jiang Xia looked up at her. He almost forgot that this person was also a professional at calling the police, and her finger speed in pressing 110 was no less than Mao Lilan's.
Since the cell phone didn't work, Huiyuan Ai quickly thought of another solution: "I remember there is a landline in the hotel we are staying in."
But she stopped midway through her words.
——There were three people in the hotel where she stayed who were invited by the "invitation letter sent by Kono".
But Kono is dead now, so the person who sent the invitation must be someone else.
And now, Kono's body was scattered in front of this famous observation point... as if someone had deliberately arranged it like this, just waiting for the body to be discovered.
If we just follow the routine and bring the news of "there is a dead person here" back to the hotel, no one knows whether it will fulfill the wishes of the mastermind behind it.
Haibara Ai hesitated for a moment and did not say these speculations out loud - with strangers around, she had to maintain the image of a "six-year-old child".
Moreover, she had just mentioned Kono's invitation letter to Jiang Xia. Without her saying anything, Jiang Xia would definitely understand the hidden dangers involved.
So Huiyuan Ai jumped to the conclusion directly. She looked at Jiang Xia and said briefly: "Where are you from? If it's not far, why don't we go to your place and borrow your phone to call the police..."
Before he finished speaking, a figure walked out from the deep forest.
Immediately afterwards, a strange male voice was heard, and the man asked hesitantly: "Call the police? What happened?"
Jiang Xia looked up and saw a middle-aged man with long cheeks and short curly hair. He was holding something like a heavy discus in his hand.
Dr. Agasa seemed to know him: "Mr. Amado?"
As he spoke, the doctor remembered the strange bones at his feet and couldn't help but become suspicious: "What are you doing here?"
Boss Amado is the owner of the hotel where Dr. Agasa and his group are staying.
Also operates telescope rental business.
He handed over the lead weight in his hand and said honestly, "I just remembered that there is a lead weight missing from the telescope you borrowed. I forgot to put it back last time."
After saying that, he seemed to still care about what Haibara Ai had just said. He glanced around casually and soon saw the skeleton on the ground.
The air stagnated for a moment.
The next second, Boss Tiantu let out a scream, ran away and rushed back to the hotel.
Jiang Xia silently looked at his back and felt that his acting was a bit exaggerated.
but……
"Since we've been discovered, let's borrow the phone in the hotel to call the police." Jiang Xia looked helpless, but said with a hint of expectation in his heart.
Yuanshan Heye nodded, not daring to look at the skeleton on the ground, his mind full of "alarm".
Rob didn't expect to encounter another murder case. He didn't really want to deal with the police, but he was away from home, and if the police testified, the alibi at Spider Mansion would look more solid. So he quickly nodded in agreement.
…
A group of people were on their way to the hotel.
More than ten kilometers away, in the Spider Mansion.
Hattori Heiji is chatting with Takeda Ryuji.
At this time, Takeda Yongzo hurriedly opened the door and said, "Have you seen my brother? He just said he went to the studio to make puppets, but I searched the whole house and couldn't find him."
"What?!"
Even though an adult had only been missing for an hour or two, it wasn't a big deal.
But Hattori Heiji still had a bad feeling.
He followed the Takeda family to look for it, and suddenly thought of a place:
"Have you looked for that abandoned warehouse built on the Spider Temple?"
Takeda Yuzo had seen a hanged body there three years ago, and now he was scared when he heard about the warehouse, so of course he didn't take the initiative to go over: "No, no."
"Go up and take a look!"
A group of people walked up the dusty stairs and rushed to the door of the warehouse on the second floor.
I saw that the warehouse door was tightly locked.
Hattori Heiji turned the door handle and felt some kind of alarm bell ringing in his head.
He immediately made a decisive move and asked someone to get an axe to break down the door.
After a few blows of the axe, the cracked wooden door creaked open.
A corpse hanging in the air appeared before my eyes.
Shinichi Takeda was like a poor insect stuck in a spider web, hanging with his eyes open in this dusty warehouse.
“…”
Hattori Heiji stared at the corpse, his mind going blank for a moment. Takeda Shinichi had just left the table for more than an hour. In such a short time... who killed him?
"Spider-sama, this, this is just like the legend of Spider-sama..." Takeda Ryuji felt a chill in his heart as he watched his elder brother die with his eyes open. At the same time, he couldn't help but think of his niece and daughter who had been hanged here.
When mentioning his niece, Takeda Ryuji thought of the two people who had just gone to the cemetery to pay respect to Misa: "By the way, I heard that Spider-sama often appears at the cemetery where Rob and the others are now!"
"?!" Hattori Heiji's face turned brown when he thought of Toyama Kazuha.
Although he did not believe that there was such a thing as "Spider-Lord" in the world, the way Takeda Shinichi died meant that there was indeed a murderer who was killing people in the name of Spider-Lord.
And the fact that "Mr. Spider" often appears in cemeteries may mean that the murderer also often appears in cemeteries!
This is too dangerous!
Hattori Heiji felt that he should be frightened at this moment, after all, his companions were in the cemetery.
But in fact, when I think of "danger", I think of Jiangxia who went with me...
The combination of these two words made Hattori Heiji's thoughts subtly change - he remembered the murderers who had wailed in front of him but he was reluctant to lend a helping hand.
...and a certain high school detective who was stepping on the murderer and hitting him non-stop.
“…”
Hattori Heiji silently glanced at Takeda Shinichi who was hanging in the warehouse, and suddenly realized that instead of worrying about Kazuha and Jiang Xia being murdered by the murderer, he should be more worried - when he was busy solving the case and only needed a little clue to solve the whole case, Jiang Xia suddenly came back with a murderer who was beaten half to death, threw him to the ground easily, and said something like "I accidentally met the murderer, thought he was suspicious, so I held him down and beat him up, and now he has confessed everything"...
“……” Blood pressure rose.
Hattori Heiji knocked his head for the Nth time, trying to make his mind become like a normal high school detective, instead of always thinking about messy things.
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath: "Call the police first."
…
Deep in the mountains.
Boss Tiantu’s hotel is indeed not far from the star observation point.
Tourists were quite rare in this season. Jiang Xia took a quick look after entering the house and found that the few guests were all gathered in the hall - a drunken woman holding a wine jug and holding her chin to her hand, a middle-aged man with a high hairline, and a hedgehog-haired man.
Except for the startled boss Tento, the other three guests were all invited by the late "Mr. Kono".
One of them is Masao Kouno's fiancée, Etsuko Nonomiya.
The other two had little to do with Kono—they were the editor and editor-in-chief of an astronomy magazine called Space Sunday. The only intersection between the two and Kono was that they had stayed at this hotel the day Kono disappeared a year ago.
Haibara Ai's gaze first fell on Nonomiya Etsuko.
Some time ago, after Huiyuan Ai defected from the organization, she had a lot more free time than before. She subscribed to many newspapers that often reported on Jiang Xia's crimes.
There is not just one case in a newspaper, and Haibara Ai often finishes reading all of them while flipping through them, thus gaining a lot of experience in solving cases.
So in her opinion, the current lineup and configuration in the hotel, combined with the cause and effect, seemed like someone was trying to find the enemy who killed Kono.
Haibara Ai thought about the news she heard during the time when Jiang Xia was away, and thought it might be useful.
So he came over again and quietly gave Jiang Xia more information: "It seems that the boss of Tiantu also had a good relationship with the deceased - Mr. Kono and Miss Nonomiya were his juniors in college, and the two of them often came here to vacation together."
The moment Jiang Xia entered the room, he had already looked at all the places he needed to look at. He successfully found a somewhat old leg-grabbing shikigami on the leg of one of the people and confirmed the murderer who killed Kouno Masao.
However, he remembered that there was still a ghost here that he could pick up.
So Jiang Xia withdrew his hidden gaze and, like a real detective solving a case, he whispered to Huibara in a low voice:
"It seems that the person who sent out the invitation and planned all this is more likely to be between Miss Nonomiya and Mr. Amado."
Of course, all of this is based on a premise - the deceased is really Maao Kono.
Fortunately, this is not difficult to confirm.
——The corpse scattered under the hill had cavities on its front teeth. After asking Nonomiya, it turned out that this matched Kono's characteristics.
In the gaps between their brief conversation, Boss Tiantu kept dialing the phone, trying to call the police, but the call was unsuccessful for a long time.
Jiang Xia looked at the boss who was performing hard, walked over and tapped on the phone: "Don't press it, it's not plugged into the phone line."
"What?!" Boss Tiantu was shocked again. He looked at the phone and said, "No wonder I always felt something was wrong..."
Jiang Xia: “…”
In his impression, the person who sent out the invitation, hid the telephone lines, and even first discovered the white bones on the mountain was this boss.
Boss Tiantu only knew that his junior died tragically, but he didn't know who killed him.
So he found all the people who lived here when Kono disappeared, hoping that after seeing the body, that person would voluntarily surrender, or reveal his flaws and be taken away by the police as a reward.
(End of this chapter)
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