It had begun to rain, which Ran commented on how hard it was coming down.
"If this downpour keeps up, there's no leaving come tomorrow," Maria said.
"I'm tired from staying up all night, not to mention hungry," Kogoro grumbled.
"Shall I make some coffee and something cold to eat?" Hitomi offered.
Ran looked at her. "I'll help you!"
"I'll come too!" Ikuo said. "I'd be worried if you two girls were all by yourselves."
Suzume hid a smile behind her hand. Ah, Ran can handle herself, but I can appreciate the thought...
"I'll come too," Kento said as they all walked out of the room.
"But if the owner really is the killer, why would he pretend to die and then kill Ayako-san?" Maria asked.
Toshiaki slammed his hands onto the table, getting to his feet with a dark face. "He's enjoying his murder! Have a look at this card!" He held it up. "Had I not been careful I would've been killed!"
Kogoro took the card and looked it over. "If you want the book, then come to the garage at 5 AM tomorrow. I'll put it beneath the back seat," he read it aloud. "It was past 4:30 when the fire started in the garage."
"The back seat? That's where Ayako's body was!" Heiji said.
Suzume looked at Toshiaki. "Where did you get this card?" she asked him.
"It was stuck in my door when I returned from dinner last night," he answered.
"That's it! I figured it out!" Kogoro exclaimed.
"Listen, Mister!" Heiji interrupted him. "How many times do I have to say it?! The owner was dead!"
"Can I really trust what a kid saw?" Kogoro muttered, giving Heiji a side-eye.
Heiji scowled. "What'd you say?!"
Judging from where Ayako-san died, it would seem that she too went to the garage to get the book, Suzume thought to herself, shutting her eyes as she thought. Which means the only remaining mystery of the second incident is how the killer lit the garage on fire while still in the room.
"And it's because of detectives like you that so many cases go unsolved—" Heiji was still going on when Ran interrupted.
"How rude!" she huffed, setting her tray on the table. "With Suzume's help, my dad solves his cases every single time!"
Yeah, but he still has Suzume's help...
The lights suddenly went out.
"A power outage?!" Heiji gasped.
"Was it from lightning?" Ran asked.
"No! It's just a blown fuse!" Hitomi said.
"Then hurry and reset the circuit breakers! Damn it! Now, of all times!" Toshiaki lit a lighter, letting some light in the room. "Here, Miss. Use this light."
Both Heiji and Suzume's eyes widened when they saw something glimmer in the darkness. An ice pick! Toshiaki shouted in pain.
"What's going on?!" Kogoro demanded as there was a crash.
"What's that sound?!" Maria asked.
"Glass," Nanako said.
"Maid!" Ikuo called out.
"Hurry with the lights!" Kento was next.
The lights came back on to reveal Suzume and Heiji holding onto Toshiaki, who had an ice pick stabbed into his arm.
"Fujisawa-san!" Kogoro said. "How?!"
"Dad! The window glass!" Ran cried out, referring to the large hole in the window.
"Dammit! They smashed the window and escaped!" Kogoro said.
Heiji sat up. No! The killer's still in here! And—
And now I finally know how the killer set the garage on fire while in this room, Suzume thought, a smirk appearing on her face.
Suzume and Heiji dragged Toshiaki to one of the seats and Ran handed her friend some bandages, which she wrapped around Toshiaki's wound with practiced ease.
"Who would do such a thing?!" Hitomi cried when Suzume was done.
"It was the owner," Kogoro said, making Suzume give him a look from the corner of her eye. "He faked his death during the first incident, hid somewhere inside this lodge, burned Ayako-san to death in the garage, then attacked Fujisawa-san with an ice pick and escaped out that window!"
"Damn it! Why would the owner want to kill me?!" Toshiaki scowled. "I even helped him with the book he published!"
Suzume looked at Toshiaki. "I'm sorry, book?"
Toshiaki looked up at her. "A Holmes book he published last year with his own money," he explained. "I believe the title was The Disparagement of Irene Adler."
Irene Adler? Suzume furrowed her brows.
"Alright, Ran! We're going after the owner!" Kogoro said.
"Right," she said, nodding, but did look a little reluctant since she knew Suzume and Heiji didn't believe the owner was the culprit.
"Forget about it. There's no point," Heiji interrupted, stopping Kogoro from jumping out the broken window. "You'd never find the killer by looking out there!"
"What do you know?!" Kogoro scoffed.
Heiji gestured a hand towards the table. "Take a closer look at this chair. See how it's unnaturally placed at the narrow end?" Suzume glanced at it and saw the glass shards on the back legs of the chair. "It's proof that the killer quickly pushed it under after breaking the window."
"There are pieces of glass stuck to the back legs," Suzume told the others, crossing her arms.
Kogoro sighed, putting his hands in his pockets. "But that only proves the killer used the chair to—"
"You idiot! Who would bother putting a chair back after smashing a window to escape through it?" Heiji said, frowning. "The killer probably held the chair with bare hands when they broke the window! It was too dark to remove the fingerprints, so the killer put the chair back under the table so we wouldn't notice and so they could wipe the fingerprints off when no one was looking."
"After the lights came back on?" Ikuo asked.
"Wait, we were the only ones in the room then..." Maria said.
"That's right," Heiji agreed, looking over at them. "Now do you see that the owner didn't do it and that the killer is in this very room?!"
Kogoro looked at Hitomi. "Maid-san. You said a fuse had blown when the lights went out, correct?"
She nodded. "Yes! When I tried to plug in the coffee maker, it suddenly sparked!" She led them to the kitchen to show them. "It was this outlet!"
Heiji held the burnt plug up so he and Suzume could look at it. "There was a thin wire wrapped around the plug so that it would cause a short if someone plugged it in," Suzume observed.
"But where did the killer get this wire?" Kogoro wondered as he took it from Heiji.
Suzume took a look around one of the drawers and pulled out a coffee bag with a metal wire. "It was probably from something like this," She said, holding it up to show everyone. "The wire attached to the top of this coffee pack."
Kogoro took it from her to compare it to the plug. "The width and length do match perfectly."
"Who opened the packs?" Heiji asked Hitomi.
"Kawatsu-san and Togano-san," she answered.
Kogoro chuckled. "Now it's clear. You're the killer, Kawatsu-san!"
Suzume just dropped her head into her palms and exhaled slowly, Heiji patting her back in sympathy while Ran let out an awkward laugh.
"Hold on, now!" Ikuo said, holding up his hands. "There were three other people in the kitchen besides me—"
He was cut off by Kogoro getting into his face. "You moron! All three of those people have alibis for the first incident! You most likely took a wire off a pack when no one was looking, wrapped it around the plug, and then returned to the living room to wait for the lights to go out! Then, in the darkness, you attacked Fujisawa-san with an ice pick that you carried in here with some ice using the flame from his lighter to find him! However, some unexpected obstacles caused you to fail." Kogoro looked back at Heiji. "Isn't that right?"
"Yeah, but something's not quite right," Heiji said. "Right, Suzume?"
She nodded. "The third incident when Fujisawa-san was attacked is different than the first two in that the culprit plainly left behind evidence," she said. "Maybe the third attack wasn't originally part of the killer's plan?"
They walked out of the kitchen when Maria asked, "But isn't it strange, Detective? If Kawatsu-san really is the killer, how did he set the garage on fire during the second incident? And during the first incident, the owner's car sped up before it went over the cliff!"
"That's right!" Ikuo said.
"Yeah," Heiji sighed as he walked over. "I've got almost all of the second incident solved, but the first incident makes no sense."
Maria looked at him in shock. "Eh? You know how they set the garage on fire?!"
"Well, yeah," he murmured. "At any rate, what I don't understand about the first incident are the following four points: why we didn't see the owner for almost an entire day; why the car suddenly sped up; the odd sound coming from inside the car and the blanket on the dashboard; and then one more mystery appeared when we came here. The owner was holding the steering wheel tightly. The car was on a bumpy road, but his body never slumped. That means by the time he was placed in the car, he was long dead, and rigor mortis had set in!"
"Rigor mortis?!"
"A body usually starts to stiffen thirty minutes to two hours after death," Suzume explained. "Then nine to twelve hours after that, the body becomes completely stiff. Thirty hours after that, under the best circumstances, the body loosens up again, and approximately seventy hours later it's back to normal."
Heiji nodded at her. "If we assume the owner was completely stiff when he was placed in the car at 3:30 AM, then he was killed between 3:30 and 5:30 PM the previous day. In other words, sometime before dinner, but what I don't understand is why they had to put him in the car so early."
"Maybe to make it look like a suicide?" Kento suggested. "My guess is that they killed the owner before dinner, put him in the car, had him sit with his hands on the wheel, waited for him to stiffen, and then went to the garage after dinner and sent the car on its way. In other words, the killer was one of you who left after dinner!"
"Then why did the car speed up?" Maria asked.
"A dead person couldn't possibly have done that," Ikuo agreed.
Heiji's eyes widened. A dead person?!
Suzume blinked. Could the killer's trick be...
If so, then only that person could've done it, but there's still no proof! Heiji thought.
Wait a minute, Suzume thought, looking down. She did say that Ayako-san was loitering in the hall in the afternoon... If she had actually seen something in that person's room...
Both detective's eyes widened.
That's it, Heiji smirked.
Now I see, Suzume smiled.
"I know the killer's identity!" Kogoro announced and chuckled at the looks on Heiji and Suzume's faces. "Yes, the killer is you!" He pointed his finger. "Fortuneteller Toda Maria-san!"
"I beg your pardon?!"
"You must've used hypnosis to make the owner drive the car!" Kogoro said with a smirk.
Heiji sighed. Give me a break. He shared a look with Suzume and raised an eyebrow. Is this normal for you?
She nodded, looking like she was ready to die. You get used to it the more you hang around him... Her eyes widened. "What happens to rigor mortis if the temperature goes up?" she asked him. "Would it start sooner?"
Heiji's eyes widened before smirking and shrugging, playing along with an act. "I haven't the slightest idea. I'm pretty dumb, you see." He let out a strangled sound when Suzume punched him in his side. "What the hell?!"
She huffed. "Don't play that shit with me, Hattori Heiji," she muttered, crossing her arms and looking away from him.
"Will you get serious?!" Maria demanded to Kogoro. "I'm a fortune teller, not a magician!"
Suzume sighed, leaning against the shut door. "Alright, that's enough," she said.
"What?"
"I've figured out who the killer is," she said.
"You did?"
She gave him a look. "Of course. The person behind all three incidents at this lodge is you!" She pointed a finger in Kogoro's direction.
He pointed at himself. "Me?!"
She sighed. "No, the man in a cold sweat behind you, Togano-san."
The university student held up his hands. "Wait! I was here in the living room hours before the car even took off!" he argued. "And when Ayako was killed, I was with everyone else!"
Kogoro scowled. "He's right, you moron!"
"Dad!" Ran scolded him.
"You were with us too when the car started moving!" Kogoro continued. "How could Togano-san possibly have started the car?!"
"It does appear to be impossible, doesn't it?" Suzume mused. "But if he utilized rigor mortis and a certain function of the car, it would become possible. The trick goes like this. The culprit killed the owner almost exactly one day ago, sat him in the car seat, and stuck his foot on the brake. Rigor mortis would occur half a day later, and the brakes would have kept the car motionless even if the engine was running and in drive. Before dinner last night, the killer opened the garage and then waited in the living room for the foot on the brake to loosen up and cause the car to start moving."
"You fool!" Kogoro scoffed. "Rigor mortis doesn't go away until at least forty hours after death! You said it yourself earlier!"
"What if the outside temperature increases?" Suzume proposed. "If the temperature around the body was about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the rigor mortis and rate of loosening up would speed up, so it would start to go away after only twenty-four to thirty hours. It was after 10:00 PM two nights ago that the owner disappeared. If he had been killed shortly afterward...the car started moving approximately twenty-nine hours later, before 3:30 this morning, which was just about the right time.
"The hissing sound we heard inside the car wasn't the air conditioner. It was the heater! Had it been the AC, water drops would have fallen by the front tires."
"So that's why you were checking around the tire tracks?" Ran asked, now understanding.
Suzume nodded. "Right. Naturally, there were no water marks to be found."
"But that trick would be easy to see through by checking the body," Kogoro pointed out.
"That's why the killer sent the owner over the cliff in the car," Suzume said. "To make the body unrecoverable so we couldn't check the state of rigor mortis!"
"So why did the car speed up?" Maria asked her.
"Probably because his foot slipped off the brake as the car bumped around," Suzume answered. "And the blanket on the dashboard was there to conceal the heater indicator from anyone who got near the car."
"I see!" Ikuo said. "So by witnessing the car with someone else in the room..."
"They would have an airtight alibi!" Maria finished.
"So the reason Togano-san kept Ayako-san in the living room was because he wanted someone who would witness the car with him?" Ran asked.
"Got it in one," Suzume said, smiling at her friend. "And the only person who could have done such a thing was Togano-san."
The accused let out a laugh. "Interesting," he said. "Your theory almost sounds like it's straight out of a novel. It's too bad you have no evidence to prove it. And as I've said before, when the fire erupted in the garage, I was in here with everyone else. No matter how you look at it, there's no way I could have set the fire exactly when Ayako happened to go in there."
"No, but it would still be easy enough," Suzume said, making him look at her. "All you had to do was tell her that the first-edition Holmes book was hidden beneath the back seat of the car in the garage."
"The first-edition book?" Kogoro repeated, raising an eyebrow. "What's that have to do with anything?"
"Did you forget? At that time, the car in the garage was drained of its gasoline and its battery was removed. She wanted to look for the book, but with the car lights unusable, the back seat would have been pitch black," Suzume explained with a sigh. "What would you have done?"
"If it were pitch dark, I'd have to use a lighter or something," Kogoro answered before gasping. "That's it! A lighter! Ayako-san used a lighter to look for the book! The flame ignited the gasoline that had leaked from the car!"
"So she was the one who started the fire?!" Hitomi asked.
"But she was an important witness from the first incident!" Ikuo said.
"But there were four other witnesses besides her," Suzume pointed out. "There would have been no need to keep her alive."
"But aren't Ayako-san and Togano-san lovers?" Ran asked. "Why would he do that?"
"Because she figured out his rigor mortis trick and found evidence that he was the one responsible," Suzume declared, frowning. "You all remember. Ayako-san declared she knew who the killer was. Hearing that, Togano-san grew flustered and pretended to follow her to the bathroom. He then told her about the first-edition book and lured her into a trap in the garage."
"Now that you mention it, Togano-san was the only one alone with her," Ikuo said.
"So that's why she changed her attitude after leaving the bathroom!" Maria added. "But he certainly was clever to come up with that garage trick."
"No. That trap had been prepared in advance for a certain person," Suzume said. "The killer lucked out because Ayako-san had a lighter, just as that other person would have had. The trap in the garage was really meant to kill Fujisawa-san!"
"What?!" the man gasped.
"That card that was stuck in your door...the killer intended to lure you into the garage and murder you," Suzume told him. "But things didn't go according to plan and the garage trap ended up killing Ayako-san instead. He quickly devised a plan to cause a blackout by fiddling with the outlet and then attacked Fujisawa-san with an ice pick!"
"I see. So that's why there was so much evidence after the third incident," Kogoro said.
"Togano-san was in the kitchen at the time. He could've very easily fiddled with it!" Suzume glared at him. "In other words, the only person who could've pulled off all three incidents was Togano-san!"
He smirked. "Then show us your proof!" He leaned towards her, ignoring Heiji's glare. "If you're going to make such accusations, then surely you have proof?"
She hummed in amusement. "Oh? You mean you don't know? Ayako-san saw a certain something in your room yesterday afternoon."
"It doesn't matter what she saw! She can't talk now—"
"Question 1: Which hand did Holmes write with?" Suzume asked, making him blink. "Question 2: What is the name of Dr. Watson's wife?"
"What is this?!" Kento demanded.
"Oh my. Have you forgotten?" Suzume smirked at him. "Didn't you take the Holmes Cult Test of 1000 Questions too?" He gasped. "Question 241: What did Holmes' letter written in the 'Dancing Men' code say to the killer?"
Kento panicked, a nervous smile on his face. "Oh, I remember that question very well...The answer is, "Come here at once!""
"That question wasn't on the test," Nanako said quietly, making Kento's smile fall.
"There was only that one question about The Dancing Men!" Maria remembered.
"Write down the entire 'Dancing Men' code as it appeared!" Ikuo agreed.
"That's right. That question was so hard it would be impossible to forget," Suzume said. "Isn't it strange that you don't remember it?"
"I was just—!"
"The reason Ayako-san went to your room was to copy your test answers," Suzume interrupted him. "But you weren't in your room. You had probably gone to the garage to check the state of the owner's rigor mortis!"
"So what Ayako-san saw was—" Ran said.
"A completely blank test with no answers written at all!" Suzume nodded. "The reason he didn't write anything down was because there wouldn't be any point. In other words, you knew that the owner wouldn't be grading the tests because he was dead." She watched him try to come up with an excuse. "If you're going to claim this is all nonsense, then would you kindly show us your test? Now."
Kento fell to his knees. "D-Damn it!"
"Why you..." Toshiaki growled, grabbing the collar of Kento's shirt and pulling him up with a glare. "Speak up! Why did you want me and the owner dead?!"
"The Disparagement of Irene Adler," Suzume named. "His motive was most likely the book you helped the owner write."
"What?!"
Ran's brows furrowed in thought. "Irene? The actress who outwitted Holmes in one of the stories?"
Hitomi nodded. "Yes. But the owner's book was mostly about Holmes' failure as a detective," she explained.
"Now I see," Ikuo said. "Togano-san felt that the book insulted Holmes, so he—"
Kento chuckled. "Just the opposite. Irene was the only woman Sherlock admired. I couldn't possibly see such a woman ridiculing him."
Toshiaki blinked and let go of Kento.
"I couldn't allow it," Kento whispered. "I absolutely couldn't!"
They all watched him as he began to cry.
~ — — — ~
"So you listened to a deal go down by members of this organization and are working cases to see if they're related to them?" Heiji summarized as he and Suzume sat together on the bus drive back to their homes.
"So, did you like the surprise?" Ran asked, leaning over the seat to look down at them.
"I did," Suzume said, smiling at her and Heiji. "I needed it."
Both of her friends smiled at that and went back to sitting in comfortable silence.
Fun Facts —
— Is there something wrong with me for making this an eventual polyamory story? This is a genuine question because there are too many characters in this anime to fall in absolute love with.
— Speaking of love, the seeds of Heiji and Suzume's attraction to each other are being sewn. He's already so protective of her, and I love it.
— Kogoro has hopped onto the SuzuRan train and has joined conductors Yukiko and Sonoko.