"The killer is you, Hitomi-san!"
All the officers present turned toward Hitomi, who stood frozen in shock.
Most of them found the teenager's accusation hard to believe. The murder weapon had already been found in Aiko's handbag, how could Hitomi possibly be the killer?
Of course, there were also a few people whose brains were actually functioning, such as Wataru and Higo.
"Who is this kid?" Higo asked, raising an eyebrow.
Wataru answered honestly, "He's the recently popular high school detective Kudo Shinichi. He's helped the police solve quite a few cases and is also Inspector Onizawa's prized student."
"Hm? Inspector Onizawa? Heh, that celebrity from Section Three?"
Higo laughed heartily, apparently recalling something. In a cheerful tone, he brought up a nickname that left a certain eavesdropper speechless.
"The genius detective known as the 'King of a Hundred Demons, Shuten-doji.'"
Holding a can of coffee, Ritsu's eyelid twitched as he silently cursed the inspector he'd never even met.
Wataru couldn't help chuckling when he heard the nickname.
"Yeah. I think Kudo-kun has noticed something the rest of us missed. After all, he was riding with them. The killer committed the crime right in front of his eyes."
After several seconds of stunned silence, Hitomi finally realized everyone's suspicious gazes had settled on her.
"What nonsense are you talking about?!" she protested anxiously. "You saw the police find the knife in Aiko's bag! Why are you saying I'm the killer?!"
Shinichi calmly slipped both hands into his pockets and answered confidently:
"A knife like that couldn't possibly sever a person's head. And with a woman's physical strength, it would be even more impossible."
He paused briefly.
"And if she were the real killer, she could have simply discarded the weapon after committing the crime. Why would she go out of her way to hide it in her own bag and wait for the police to find it?"
His usually gentle eyes had sharpened considerably. Looking directly at Hitomi, he revealed the conclusion he had reached.
"Because the real killer wanted to frame Aiko-san. You placed the knife in her bag beforehand, didn't you? Once it's tested, the blood on it will probably turn out not to be human blood at all. It should be animal blood that you obtained elsewhere."
Hitomi's face gradually turned pale. Biting her lip, she clearly realized her attempt at framing someone had been rather foolish.
Even so, she wasn't ready to give up.
The boy in front of her couldn't possibly figure out her murder method. Without physical evidence, he couldn't convict her.
Having convinced herself of that, Hitomi shot back angrily, "Stop slandering me! There was a whole seat between me and Kishida! How could I possibly cut off his head?!"
...
Even Ritsu, who wasn't at the scene, was curious. How exactly could someone decapitate a victim with an empty seat between them?
Squatting down, he picked up a stick from the ground and began sketching a diagram.
To decapitate someone on a roller coaster, it obviously couldn't be done through one's own strength.
That meant the coaster itself had to be used.
In that case, the only plausible answer was a rope and a hook.
"It's true that a woman's physical strength wouldn't be enough. But if you use the speed of the roller coaster together with something like piano wire or a metal loop, it becomes possible!"
"Oh... so it really was one of those."
As Shinichi's deduction came through the bug, Ritsu was genuinely surprised. The most logical murder method he had imagined matched the actual solution perfectly.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
'Maybe I really am suited to being a crime planner.'
"And next, she'd place something behind herself to create slack in the safety restraint, slip partially out of it, and use her balance and flexibility to sit above the seat and loop the wire backward."
As Ritsu finished his own analysis, Shinichi began explaining the method at the scene.
The two explanations were nearly identical.
No wonder Shinichi had figured out the trick so quickly, he already knew that Hitomi had a gymnastics background.
"Tch... Pulling off something like that on a roller coaster."
Resting his chin on his hand, Ritsu muttered something that even made himself feel ridiculous.
"If the Organization's lower-ranking members were this competent, the code-name agents wouldn't have to work overtime every day."
He briefly wondered whether Gin might be tempted to recruit the woman. Then he immediately dismissed the idea.
Gin would never choose an operations member who had the skills to commit murder but lacked the brains to cover it up.
That simply wasn't happening.
...
Back at the crime scene,
Reiko Inaba, dressed in a red turtleneck sweater, was still defending her friend.
"According to your theory, what about those two sitting behind Kishida? They could've done it just as easily! And they look incredibly suspicious!"
Hearing that statement, Ritsu nearly choked on his coffee. He hurriedly wiped the spilled coffee from his clothes.
Fortunately, his operational gear was black. If he'd been wearing his usual white shirt, it would've been a disaster.
The ignorant truly were the bravest.
He couldn't help giving the courageous girl a mental thumbs-up.
Gin stood with his hands in his pockets, one hand constantly resting near his Beretta.
If these suicidal police officers decided to search him, he wouldn't mind painting the entire area red with blood.
"No. They may look suspicious, but they're not the killers," Shinichi stated firmly.
Of course, he didn't deny the suspicious part. Those two were obviously in a hurry to leave because they had something important going on.
Perhaps some kind of underground transaction.
Although...
Would anyone really choose an amusement park as the location for such a deal?
Ritsu wasn't particularly interested in the rest of the deduction. Since the case was clearly about to conclude, it was time for him to get back to work.
For example—
"Pffft—!"
For the second time that day, Ritsu sprayed coffee everywhere. The reason was a completely surreal sight that had entered his field of vision.
Korn, wearing a black baseball cap and round protective goggles, was sitting obediently on a merry-go-round horse.
And judging from the faint, bizarre blush on his face, he was actually enjoying it.
The image was so shocking that it felt like watching the tortoise from The Tortoise and the Hare consume a mountain of laxatives, propel itself forward through endless biological gas emissions, trigger a second catastrophic bodily reaction, and use that as a rocket engine to sprint straight across the finish line.
"..."
Ritsu walked over with a dark expression.
Seeing Chianti standing nearby with a look that practically said "My son is so interesting," he asked in a dangerous tone,
"Why are you two still here? Didn't I tell you to go back?"
The sudden appearance startled Chianti. Her hand instinctively moved toward the knife at her waist before she realized it was Augier.
Avoiding eye contact, she replied awkwardly, "Uh... the amusement park is really big. We got lost."
'Lost? Even Vodka probably wouldn't believe a lie at that level.'
At long last, Ritsu finally understood Gin's daily suffering from babysitting oversized children.
Before, he'd never had to manage two of them at once.
Today, he finally got it.
"Get back to the base and train!"
"...Yes."
After personally escorting the pair out of the amusement park, Ritsu reconnected his earpiece to the bug.
The device still had some operating time left, so he decided to check whether Gin and Vodka had successfully withdrawn.
Fortunately, the police hadn't conducted body searches.
After all, they had no legal justification to do so.
As a result, Gin and Vodka managed to leave without incident and blend into the crowd while preparing to contact their transaction partner.
The murder case had already made them seriously late.
"Looks like there's nothing left for me to do."
Ritsu stopped at a nearby stall and bought a serving of takoyaki, planning to fill his stomach before heading back to his apartment and ordering delivery.
But as he was about to leave the amusement park, his gaze landed on Ran. She was crouched alone, tying her shoelaces.
Ritsu looked around.
After confirming that Shinichi was nowhere in sight, a very ominous thought surfaced in his mind.
'That idiot... Don't tell me he went to follow Gin and Vodka?!'