Chapter 3606, Chapter 3618: [The Lawyer Consort]
The two fake elementary school students looked at each other in confusion.
Along the corridor.
Curaçao looked away, not wanting to glance in that direction again: one little devil was scary enough, and now there was another… She used to think children were the epitome of innocence, but now, a demon had quietly infiltrated her. Even children could no longer be trusted.
Unlike the sudden drop in the morale of a certain organization's cadre, a group of police officers nearby were actually quite happy.
"Jiang Xia!" Sato Miwako greeted her with delight.
Although she had always liked to consult Jiang Xia when she had problems, there was always a distance between them, with Inspector Megure in between. But now that the Inspector was hospitalized and she was leading the team, she truly understood what a capable detective meant to the police.
Without the slightest hesitation, Sato Miwako waved her hand: "Takagi, you explain the situation."
Officer Takagi was already prepared. He approached Jiang Xia with the documents and introduced, "The deceased's name is Nakamoto Yoshihiko, and he is the president of several companies. According to our investigation, his time of death was around 7:30 p.m., and shortly afterward, two eyewitnesses discovered his body."
Ran Mouri turned to look at Eri Kisaki: "The person who discovered it wouldn't be..."
"It's me." Eri Kisaki pushed up her glasses and said helplessly.
"Around 7:50 p.m. tonight, Attorney Shirai and I came here to see him. As soon as we entered the corridor, we heard a loud television broadcast."
"I took a look and found that the sound of the TV was coming from President Nakamoto's house. In addition, the door was ajar... To be honest, I had a very bad feeling at that time."
Jiang Xia seemed to understand: "So you pushed open the door and then found the body?"
Eri nodded and pointed to the wide-open entrance hall: "The body was lying right here. Ms. Shirai and I didn't go in; we immediately called the police. Also, I was wearing gloves when I pushed the door open, so I didn't leave any fingerprints on it."
While Curaçao nodded in agreement like a background figure, she couldn't help but steal a glance at Eri: Wearing gloves to open the door, leaving no fingerprints... and she actually said it outright? Doesn't that sound suspicious?
Beside her, Miwako Sato nodded, her face showing little sign of anything unusual.
If someone else had said those words, she might have immediately become alarmed and wondered things like, "Why do you carry gloves with you?", "Why do you have a bad feeling when the TV volume is even slightly loud?", or "Do you need to find the body quickly to solidify your alibi?"
But now, it's Eri Kisaki who's saying this.
Who is Eri Kisaki? — The mother of Jiang Xia's classmate, a queen of the legal profession, who has handled countless criminal cases and has personally encountered many cases... This elite's intuition is perhaps even sharper than that of many police officers.
Therefore, Officer Sato not only had no doubts, but was even quite pleased: they had thoughtfully not disturbed the scene; professionals are indeed different!
Jiang Xia didn't object to what Eri Kisaki said. The detective looked at the police again: "Have you already confirmed the alibi and motive for the murder?"
"How did you know?" Officer Takagi was initially surprised, but quickly realized that it wasn't surprising at all—this was Jiang Xia, and even the most complex criminals were as easy to understand as blank sheets of paper in his eyes. So it wouldn't be surprising if Jiang Xia saw through anything about him, since he himself was like a blank sheet of paper.
Officer Takagi shook his head, acknowledging his question, then flipped through his notebook and said to Jiang Xia:
"As for the motive, the deceased were a complex group, and they had offended many people. We are still investigating."
"As for alibis... the administrator said that apart from the two visiting lawyers, no other suspicious persons were seen entering or leaving the apartment, so we prioritized investigating the residents here—this apartment building is quite upscale, each unit is very large, and there are only two floors, so there aren't many residents."
“We checked one by one, and so far... every resident has an alibi.”
"As for Attorneys Ki and Shirai, they were the first to discover the body, which is theoretically very suspicious. However, judging from the time of death, the deceased was already dead about 20 minutes before they arrived."
"In addition, before coming to President Nakamoto's place, the two of them had been working at a law firm, which is evidenced by surveillance footage and colleagues."
Upon hearing this, Officer Sato glanced at Attorney Shirai, who was gazing wistfully at the night sky, and whispered to Jiang Xia, "The deceased was waiting for someone before his death—he had prepared a candlelight dinner, and according to our investigation, the person he wanted to meet seems to be Ms. Shirai."
“Around 7 p.m., he made a phone call to Ms. Shirai. After that, he made and received several more calls intermittently. We questioned each of the people on the phone and learned that during the 7:30 p.m. call, the deceased heard someone at the door when he answered the phone, so he hurriedly hung up the phone and went to open the door—the person who knocked on the door at that time should be the real murderer who killed him.”
Jiang Xia followed her gaze to Attorney Shirai: "At 7:30, this Ms. Shirai..."
“I’m on my way here with Attorney Ki.” Miwako Sato sighed. “I always felt she was a bit suspicious, but her alibi is just too solid.”
When two policemen and a detective huddled together and whispered.
Not far away, Curacao was eavesdropping, the pleasant scent of aloe vera rising and falling with her fluctuating emotions.
Behind her, Eri Kisaki looked at her relatively inexperienced colleague and slowly frowned.
"Ms. Shirai's alibi is indeed very strong, but based on my past experience, the stronger a person's alibi... the more likely they are to be the real culprit."
As she thought about it, the answer Ms. Shirai had given during the police questioning slowly came to mind:
"That phone call around 7 o'clock? Yes, I answered it. President Nakamoto's case is about to go to trial, so he asked me to come over at 7 o'clock tonight to verify the details."
“But I couldn’t come at the time, so I postponed the meeting by an hour. After a while, Attorney Kisaki came with me, we went upstairs, and that’s when we found President Nakamoto’s body.”
Eri Kisaki stroked her chin, her gaze slowly sharpening. She thought to herself, "They agreed on a time, 7 PM... If she's afraid of President Nakamoto's authority, then Ms. Shirai will probably hesitate to come. But if she's worried that President Nakamoto has ulterior motives, then Ms. Shirai will probably refuse to meet him outright."
"But she neither kept the appointment nor refused, but instead postponed the meeting? — Normally, shouldn't being alone become more dangerous the later it gets?"
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