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Three Days with Shinichi Kudo - Meitantei Shinichi

Chapter 19: Photo Investigation

Chapter Text

"Strange," Agasa said and looked at his watch. It was almost 8:35 p.m. already. The Professor sat in his yellow beetle across the street from the entrance of the apartment building, where Sohei Nishigun supposedly lived, who said he had a photo of Eisuke Hondou's father. "He said around 8 o'clock and this is the address he told me as well..."

Shinichi pulled his Tokyo Spirits cap further down over his face and sighed. "Maybe we should take a look and see for ourselves. The guy could've come home earlier and is looking out the window for you, Professor..." Shinichi opened the door and stepped out of the car and Agasa quickly did the same. "Hey, Haibara, you might want to wait in the ca-..." Haibara ignored him, adjusted her plain black baseball cap and stepped out of the car as well. "Guess not..." Shinichi mumbled and closed the doors of the beetle.

They crossed the street and walked up to the intercom of the apartment complex. Agasa stood in front of it and scratched his chin. "Shinichi, what was the room number again?"

"302," Haibara said before Shinichi could answer. "See, good thing I didn't wait in the car, huh?"

"As if I wouldn't have remembered that..." Shinichi huffed, while Agasa dialed the number on the intercom and pressed the call button. They heard the doorbell ring, then some footsteps approaching from behind and then the Click sound of taking the safety catch of a gun off.

"Yo!" A man said from behind, making Agasa, Shinichi and Haibara jolt around to face him. He was wearing a cameo-color jacket, had a long face and black hair that reached down to his shoulders and hung into his face, covering most of his forehead and partly the eyes even. And sure enough, as the sound just now indicated, he was pointing a handgun at the three of them, while he leisurely kept the other hand in the pocket of his jacket. "I can't help but to respect your efforts," the man said. "To find the location of my hideout isn't something I would've thought you were capable of, Gramps!"

"Uwahhhhhh!?" Agasa exclaimed and hastily stumbled backwards, raising his arms over his head. Shinichi stepped in front of Haibara, whom he felt tightly grabbing his leg. From one moment to the next however, the expression of that man changed quickly from dark, threatening look to a confused one, frowning and almost pouting.

"Relax, it's just a replica!" The man said and turned the gun around, showing them that it was harmless. "I'm Sohei Nishigun. You're the friend of my grandfather I talked over the phone with, yes?"

"Ahh, y-yes..." Agasa stuttered, still a bit afraid.

"Well, I thought I'd bring this little old joke for the occasion of meeting an old friend of my grandfather, since he loved thriller movies and guns so much and pulled off this joke on anyone that waited in front of his house," Sohei explained.

"Uhh, y-yeah, I ... I just wasn't prepared for it, that's all," Agasa said, nervously shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

'I see,' Shinichi thought, narrowing his eyes in exasperation. 'To pull of this little joke, he waited this whole time until we were impatient enough to get out of the car...'

"Hm, and who are these young fellows?" Sohei asked.

"Ah, just two of my grandchildren, they learned of this whole item return quest of mine by chance and for some reason really want to help me fulfill it," Agasa quickly explained.

"But, Grandpa, if your friend is dead now, how could he be at peace in heaven if he knows that one of his regulars is still missing that item? We need to fulfill his wish!" Haibara chirped, pitching her voice higher than usual. The fake sweetness dripping from her words made it painful for Shinichi to listen to her.

Thankfully, Sohei didn't see through her act, quite the opposite. "Aw, that's so sweet, little girl. I'm sure we will make my grandfather happy," he said and led them to his apartment. "But I have to warn you: my flat is a bit messy at the moment, I didn't have time to tidy up recently."

"I-is that so, huh?" Agasa said, still nervous.

And it was quite so. Just from watching through the open door, Shinichi could already see a messy table, some clothes lying around and a smelled the slight stench of dirty dishes. 'A bit messy was understating it...' Shinichi thought.

"The slippers are scattered all over the floor..." Haibara mumbled, looking at the entrance before them.

The three of them followed him into the apartment and winced after taking the first breath inside. The air was hot and thick, making breathing a bit exhausting. It was generally much hotter inside the apartment than outside and Shinichi started to sweat relatively soon. All of them took their shoes off and choose some slippers. Agasa had to go to the toilet, so Sohei showed him where it was, opening the door to the little room.

'While the slippers in the entrance are all messy, the pair of toilet slippers is lined up in an orderly manner,' Shinichi mentally noted, before Agasa stepped out of the normal slippers into the toilet slippers and closed the door behind him. Shinichi and Haibara followed Sohei into his living room, both the great detective and the shrunken scientist wiping away some sweat running down their faces.

"Hm, it's a bit hot in here, isn't it?" Sohei said, more to himself than to his visitors. "Well, let's fix that..." He grabbed a remote control and turned on his AC.

'He only notices this now?!' Shinichi thought and felt his eyebrow twitch.

"It was very muggy today, makes the heat staunch up in the rooms," Haibara said to Sohei.

"Huh, is that so? Chemistry wasn't my strongest class back in school." Sohei shrugged and put the remote control away.

"I-is that so...?" Haibara muttered and facepalmed while he wasn't looking.

Sohei walked over to his bookshelves. "Hm, let's see, where is album where I have the photo of that regular..." He looked quite clueless.

Shinichi looked down to Haibara and frowned, because Sohei seemed a bit like a buffoon. Haibara seemed to agree with him, as she shook her head and shrugged. As Shinichi looked down to her, he noticed something on the floor. 'The floor is ... wet? Droplets of water...?' There quite a few droplets sprinkled on the floor, near the bookshelf and near Sohei's desk with a computer on it. Some were near the trashcan besides the desk as well. Shinichi followed the droplets there and looked into the bin. 'Papers and some crumbled napkins...' He faintly brushed over the napkins with his fingertips. 'Still wet...'

"Huh, I can't find the album ... it's not where I thought I put it..." Sohei said.

Shinichi narrowed his eyes. 'Droplets besides the shelf where the album is missing and besides the desk ... don't tell me...' He cleared his throat to gain Sohei's attention. "Say, if you can't find the album, you probably have it on your PC as well? You have so many photo albums in your shelves, surely you must have digital back-ups?"

"Ahh, yes, of course!" Sohei smiled and sat down at his desk, booting up his computer. His desktop looked just as messy as his apartment did, but he seemed to know where to look for the data he wanted. "What is this?! My ... my data ... all of the data of that album is gone?! But ... but I didn't delete anything...!" Sohei said after some frantic clicking.

'As I thought ... which would mean...' Shinichi walked around the desk to the computer standing on it and touched both of its sides with his hands. 'The computer feels pretty hot...'

Sohei leaned back in his chair and stared at the computer screen in disbelief. "This can't be ... how can something like happen?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say it's because someone was in your apartment and made sure that all of the data and photos are gone," Shinichi told Sohei and let go of the computer. "And it all just happened very recently."

Now Sohei stared at him in disbelief rather than at his screen. "Somebody was in here recently and deleted the pictures? Is that what you're saying? Are you serious?"

"Quite," Shinichi replied. "There is enough evidence for it, some circumstantial, some not. The first thing that irked me were the toilet slippers. While the normal slippers were scattered all over the floor, the toilet slippers were lined up perfectly, which suggests that someone used your toilet while you were at work and afterwards placed the slippers in this way." As Shinichi was finished with that explanation, Agasa left the toilet and joined the others, leaving the toilet slippers behind in a similar manner like they were when Shinichi first saw.

"Well, I see your point..." Sohei said. "But sometimes I put at least the toilet slippers properly down on the floor..."

"Sometimes, maybe, but not always, right?" Shinichi insisted.

"Ahh, no, not always..."

"It's suspicious enough for one to begin to wonder," Shinichi continued. "Next, there are all these droplets all over the floor, besides the bookshelf and the computer and there are a number of wet napkins in the trash bin. From this, I concluded that this must be the sweat of the intruder!"

"S-sweat of ... of the intruder?!" Sohei exclaimed.

"I see!" Haibara said. "With the all the staunched heat in the apartment, the intruder started to sweat heavily. He wiped off the sweat from his face with the napkins, but didn't for the sweat on his legs, which is how it created the droplets on the floor."

"But why didn't the intruder just turn on the AC then if it was so hot in here?" Agasa asked.

"Yeah, exactly!" Sohei chimed in. "I always leave the lights on, even if I'm not at home and I leave the remote for the AC lying here on this desk."

"The culprit couldn't just turn on the AC, since he didn't know how long it would take for the room to return back to its hot temperature. Think about it, if you'd return home and the air in your apartment was nicely cooled down, even though you hadn't left it on as well, you'd be suspicious immediately!" Shinichi explained and wiped away some sweat running down his cheeks. "But the most concrete piece of evidence is your PC. Even though you've just turned it on, the area around the main processor is already very hot, like it had been running for a long time before that."

"Wait ... my PC was turned on, sweat at the desk, sweat the bookshelf..." Sohei muttered. "Do you mean ... the intruder was targeting..."

"Yes, he or she was targeting your photos and the digital back-ups!" Shinichi said. "The album is gone from your shelf and the data from your computer are both gone. Judging from the sweat on the floor and the wet napkins and considering the humidity and air circulation in addition to the temperature in your apartment, the fact that the sweat is not dry yet, leads me to think the intruder was in here as recently as about ten minutes ago."

"What...!?" Sohei panted nervously. "You ... who in the world are you?!"

Conan Edogawa, a detective, came to Shinichi's mind, but he stopped himself before he could say it. 'Heh, talk about old habits die hard...' Shinichi thought. 'He might've heard the Professor talk earlier when he approached us from behind and the Professor called me Shinichi then ... hm, let's hope I can convince him if he heard that.' Shinichi put his hand in the pockets of his pants and looked Sohei straight in the eyes, saying: "My name is Kinichi Eto, private detective by trade."

"P-private detective?!"

"More importantly," Haibara said. "How did the intruder enter the apartment? The front door didn't show any signs of a forceful break-in..."

"Mhh, true. So he had to find another way in if we exclude the front door." Shinichi nodded. He looked around and went towards the sliding door in the room. "Pardon me," Shinichi said as he opened the door, prompting some slight protests from Sohei. "These are the only two rooms in your apartment, Nishigun-san?"

"Y-yeah, right..." Sohei muttered.

This room didn't look any better than the other. Clothes were scattered in front of a closet, DVDs were lying all over the floor in front of a huge TV and in front of the couch, which Sohei used as his bed, there were more than one empty box of fast food and takeout. There was also a work table in the room, with a special lamp and brushes, tubes of glue and paint, and other various things that were messily scattered all over the table. Overall: quite messy. 'Keh, this reminds me of how Kogoro's room and the office looked like when I first moved in as Conan...' Shinichi thought as he looked around, when something caught his attention. 'Huh, the curtain ... is moving?' He walked through the room and pulled the curtain back. "The door to the balcony is open!" Shinichi said to the others.

"T-that means ... the intruder got in here over the balcony?" Agasa asked.

"No," Sohei said dismissively. "I always leave the balcony door open, always at least a little slit. See, since I'm working on my dioramas in here, I'm constantly painting, gluing or polishing something, so it is important that I always aerate this room properly. And see here," he said, opened the door to the balcony fully and stepped out into the fresh air. Shinichi followed him outside. "Look, down in the streets there are all kinds of bars and restaurants and everything is bustling with people. So, nobody could've climbed up or down to my balcony with a rope or something like that without anyone noticing. It's impossible." Shinichi rested his arms on the railing on the balcony, wiped away some sweat that running down his face and looked down into the streets. As Sohei had explained, there were quite a lot of people down there and the street was well illuminated as well. Shinichi looked around on the balcony, but there was nothing here except a dryer. No easy points of access from the other balconies on the floor, nothing at all. Sohei shrugged and said: "I wouldn't shut that possibility off if it were really late at night, but it's not even nine o'clock."

"So, the intruder didn't come over the balcony," Haibara summarized as Shinichi and Sohei stepped back into the room from the balcony.

"Yeah, it would've been impossible," Sohei said and closed the door behind them. "But there is a different matter on my mind: who you people really are!"

"Huh?!" Agasa stared at Sohei in surprise.

"You told you me you were an old friend of my grandfather, who passed an item down to you which you are supposed to return to one of his former regulars," Sohei said. "I let you in here to show a photo of that regular, but then this boy is suddenly a private detective and starts searching my apartment. Pretty strange, isn't it?!"

Shinichi narrowed his eyes and wiped away some sweat running down his forehead. 'Says the one who greets strangers by holding a fake gun into their face...'

Sohei continued: "And besides, if you have narrowed down the possible candidates to a few people, who might be that former regular, why don't you just the item to each of them? One of them will recognize, if my grandfather and that regular were really that close, I mean."

"Ah, well, y-you see ... it's because..." Agasa stuttered.

Shinichi stepped in for the Professor. "We can't do that, because it is a wallet, filled to the brim with cash."

"A-a wallet...?" Sohei asked.

"Yes, that former regular seems to have forgotten it in the restaurant of your grandfather," Shinichi said. "That's why can't show it to the candidates. It's impossible that one of them might be a dishonest person and would just claim it for himself because of the money. Sadly, the wallet didn't contain any ID cards or driver's license, but you probably already figured as much, since otherwise we wouldn't have come to you to look at the photo of that one regular."

"Yeah, no, of course I figured that," Sohei said.

From the expression on his face during that confirmation, Shinichi knew that Sohei hadn't figured that out before Shinichi pointed it out to him. Shinichi wiped away some sweat from his face and continued with a question regarding the intruder: "Is there anybody else with a key to your apartment?"

"Huh? Yeah, three people in fact," Sohei replied.

"Really, who are they?"

"Well, for one there is Saori, my ex-girlfriend," Sohei recounted. "She didn't return her spare key yet. The other two are my modelmaking colleagues, Tago and Furusho. When we are participating in a diorama competition and the deadline for submission comes closer, I usually give both of them a key, so that they can come in at any time and help with building or finish what they were working on when I'm not here." Sohei looked at Shinichi with a serious expression, yet his voice sounded a bit shaky. "But I tell you, not one of them would just come in here to steal some album and delete some data!"

Shinichi coughed and took a deep breath. He felt a bit short of breath suddenly. "Why don't you give each of them a call? Ask them innocently what they were doing today, checking their stories before you call the police, who might cast serious suspicions on your friends, while in reality they could be innocent." After he finished, Sohei nodded and pulled out his phone.


While Sohei was busy with that, Professor Agasa gestured for Shinichi to come closer to him and Haibara, so he walked over to the two of them. "Shinichi..." Agasa whispered to avoid Sohei from hearing what they were talking about. "Really now, why not just call the police? Or do you ... do you think the intruder might be one of..." He hesitated.

"No, the intruder is not from the Black Organization I think," Shinichi replied to the unfinished sentence of the old man and shook his head. "They would never leave behind so much evidence of their intrusion."

Agasa didn't seem convinced. "B-but ... couldn't that just be due to the fact that Nishigun-san came home earlier today because of us? Remember, he did say that today is the day he usually goes to the gym and doesn't come home until 11 p.m.!"

"Then we would have caught the intruder right in the act though, since he had no reason to hide because it would've been impossible to know that Nishigun-san would come home earlier," Haibara interjected. "And even if there was a guard outside warning the intruder of Nishigun-san's early return, they would've rather killed him and burned down the apartment than to leave so much evidence behind." A mild smile came to her face as she explained the MO of the Black Organization, showing her confidence in judging the movements of her former overlords.

"Then why don't we call the police...?" Agasa asked.

"Because ... once the police starts to question us ... the fact that you're not an old friend of Nishigun-san's grandfather ... will be exposed rather quickly I'm afraid..." Shinichi was out of breath again. "He won't answer any question if the truth comes out ... so we need to solve this case before the police comes in and catch the intruder ... it's the only way we'll get it in our hands ... the photograph of ... the father of Eisuke Hondou..."

"Shi-Shinichi ... are you alright?" Agasa asked. He looked concerned and Haibara narrowed her eyes at him.

"Yeah, no, I'm good. Just need to catch my breath," Shinichi replied. He wiped away some sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt, lifted his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. It was very damp. He put the cap back on and said: "I'll tell you what's not good: the AC of this guy. It has been running for quite some time now and it is still so hot in here..." The Professor and Haibara looked at each other and then back at him, with even more concern in their eyes. "What...?"

"Kudo-kun, the AC is working just fine, the temperature has been very pleasant for a while now," Haibara replied. "And neither the Professor nor I are sweating anymore..."

Shinichi gasped and he felt his legs getting shaky. He stumbled backwards and leaned against a wall. Memories of the restaurant in the Beika Central Building flashed back into his mind. "Say, Inspector Megure, don't you find it way too hot in here?" Shinichi had asked the portly inspector as they stepped through a curtain.
"What are you saying? The AC has been turned down way too low, I'm almost freezing," Megure had replied.
"Oh, really? Then am I sweating so much?" Shinichi remembered saying and then his heart felt like it wanted to burst out of his chest and his thoughts went to Ran waiting for his return.

Shinichi instinctively clutched his t-shirt where his heart was pounding, even though it hadn't skipped a beat just yet. 'Not now,' Shinichi thought. 'Not ... now...!'