While the young couple playfully bickered nearby, Mr. Aso watched his wife and daughter snuggling close to him, a whirlwind of emotions stirring within his heart.
Not long ago, he had been consumed by anxiety over his son's illness and the pressure to traffic drugs, suffering from insomnia night after night.
It felt as if he had been standing in a dark abyss, unable to see a single glimmer of hope.
He never imagined that in less than half a day, everything would be resolved. Once Seiji was cured, the family could finally return to a normal life.
Thinking of this, Aso Keiji couldn't help but look gratefully toward Hayashi Shuichi. If not for this teenage detective, he wouldn't have been so lucky.
Kameyama and Kawamoto were critically injured, and it was uncertain if they would survive.
However, the unconscious Kuroiwa and Nishimoto had merely been knocked out by Shuichi. By the time they were transferred to the boat, they had already woken up.
Although transnational drug trafficking wasn't under the jurisdiction of the First Division, the four men's attempt to murder the Aso family fell squarely within Inspector Samezaki's authority.
He immediately ordered Superintendent Matsumoto to find a room on the boat and interrogate the two men right then and there.
Shuichi, having nothing to do on the boat, took Kisaki Eri along to see what was happening.
As soon as they approached the interrogation room, they heard the sounds of fists meeting flesh, accompanied by the pained screams of Kuroiwa and Nishimoto.
Eri frowned in discomfort and whispered, "Violent interrogation is illegal."
Shuichi, feeling no such psychological burden, stepped forward and knocked on the door.
The door opened quickly. When Superintendent Matsumoto saw that it was Shuichi and Eri, he hurriedly blocked the entrance. "Hayashi-kun, it's better if you don't see what's going on inside. For someone your age, it's a bit too early..."
"Did you get anything out of them?" Shuichi interrupted.
"Not yet," Matsumoto shook his head. "These two have very stiff mouths."
Shuichi peered through the gap. Kuroiwa and Nishimoto were tied to chairs. There were no obvious external wounds on their faces.
Kuroiwa, once arrogant and bald, was now trembling slightly, his eyes filled with terror.
Nishimoto hung his head, sweat beading on his forehead. His body twitched spasmodically from time to time, and even his spiky hair seemed to have gone limp.
"Change your method," Shuichi suggested. "If someone finds wounds on them later, you'll have a hard time explaining it."
"Exactly," Eri quickly added. "Torture to extract confessions has been banned for a long time..."
"We know it's not right," Matsumoto said helplessly. "But these guys are keeping their mouths shut tight. If we don't do this, I'm afraid it'll be hard to get anything useful out of them."
"I read about an interrogation method in a book once," Shuichi said after a moment of thought. "Cover the prisoner's face with several layers of tissue paper, then pour water from a kettle onto the paper. As the paper gets soaked, the prisoner will gradually experience the sensation of suffocation. Hovering on the edge of death a few times can quickly break down their psychological defenses, and it doesn't leave any marks..."
"Shuichi!" Eri interrupted her childhood friend angrily. "You..."
"That's a great idea!" Superintendent Matsumoto clapped his hands in excitement. "We'll try it right now."
"Be careful, don't actually kill them," Shuichi reminded him, before pulling Eri away.
When they returned to the deck, the girl asked with a steely face, "Where did you read about that method you just mentioned? That is too cruel. Prisoners have human rights too."
"I know they have human rights, that's why I specifically reminded Superintendent Matsumoto not to kill them," Shuichi said with an amused smile.
"You know what I mean," Eri looked displeased. "Don't try to gloss over it."
"Eri, you want the police to care about the prisoners' human rights," Shuichi asked in return, "but when these criminals were dealing with their victims, did they care about the victims' human rights?"
"If it weren't for me, the Aso family of three would have already been buried in a sea of fire. Compared to being burned alive, letting them feel a little suffocation is already very merciful."
"Police and criminals are different," Eri retorted. "They will be sanctioned by the law."
"If the police can't get anything out of them, how can the court sanction them?" Shuichi said expressionlessly. "I know violent interrogation is wrong and can easily lead to wrongful convictions."
"But I saw with my own eyes that Nishimoto and Kuroiwa intended to burn the Aso family to death. Since there is no possibility they are being wrongly accused, using some petty tricks to extract the facts of the crime as soon as possible is naturally acceptable."
"What you say makes some sense, but surely there are more civilized methods," Eri argued unconvinced. "Psychology offers many ways to interrogate prisoners."
"We don't have time to play psychological games right now," Shuichi waved his hand. "Besides, if those psychological tricks were one hundred percent effective, violent interrogation wouldn't still be a persistent problem all over the world."
Ten minutes later, Shuichi and Eri were still wasting their breath trying to convince each other.
Superintendent Matsumoto, however, walked out with a face full of joy, holding the interrogation record to report to Inspector Samezaki.
"We got it. Of the four, Kameyama is the Village Chief; he was responsible for covering for them and hiding the drugs on Moonlight Island."
"Kawamoto has done business abroad before, so he was responsible for purchasing the drugs overseas."
"Kuroiwa assisted Aso in bringing the drugs Kawamoto bought back to Japan."
"Nishimoto knows quite a few dealers in Tokyo, so he was responsible for the final sales."
"Good, this is enough to establish their motive for attempting to murder the Aso family," Inspector Samezaki nodded with satisfaction. "As for the drug trafficking, that's not our jurisdiction. Let the specialists get a headache over that."
The reason he was in such a hurry to interrogate the two was mainly out of concern that the media might twist the report of this case.
After all, although Hayashi Shuichi held the title of Investigative Consultant for the First Division, he was, at the end of the day, just an underage high school student.
Of the four criminals he caught, two were critically injured and their survival was uncertain.
Once the news media found out, who knew how they would report it? Only with sufficient evidence in hand would the police be unafraid of media scrutiny.
Shuichi asked for the interrogation record to take a look. Although Eri disliked violent interrogation, her curiosity got the better of her, and she leaned in as well.
With just one glance, the girl cried out in surprise, "Beika Library? They were trading drugs there?"
"Only possibly," Superintendent Matsumoto corrected. "Nishimoto couldn't explain the specific address clearly. He only knew that every time he contacted the other party to buy drugs, the transaction location was near the Beika Library."
"...I knew it. How could a place like a library be used for drug trafficking?"
Eri breathed a sigh of relief. For someone who loved books as much as she did, the library was practically a sanctuary. Naturally, she didn't want to see it defiled by drugs.
Well, you're going to be disappointed...
Shuichi glanced at his childhood friend. Nishimoto's testimony reminded him of a 'childhood trauma' left behind from watching Detective Conan in his past life.
He hadn't expected that the Library Director had already started dealing drugs as early as twenty years ago...
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