Stay away from Conan.

"You mean to say that the manual wasn't taken out by Shiba Ichiro himself, but was deliberately placed in his hand by the murderer?"

After Takato pointed this out, Odagiri Toshiro rested his elbows on the table, crossed his hands, and rested his chin on his hands as he pondered the question, while simultaneously turning his gaze to Inspector Megure beside him, as if signaling something.

Inspector Megure quickly realized what was going on and immediately ordered the officers next to him to fetch photos of the scene of the second incident in order to verify Takato's account.

In response to Odagiri Toshiro's question, Takato didn't need to say much, but simply confirmed it by replying:
"That's right. Think about it carefully. The second victim's death was not like Officer Narasawa's, where he was lying face up. Instead, he was face down. In that situation, how could he have taken out the police manual from his breast pocket after being shot? If Officer Shiba Ichiro was able to do that when he was dying, then logically, there should have been marks on his clothes from friction with the ground."

"And there's another thing, is the way you took that police handbook really normal?"

As Gao Yuan recounted these details, when the police officers brought over the photos of the scene, Inspector Megure and Toshiro Odagiri looked at the photos of Yoichiro Shiba lying face down with his right hand outstretched, palm up, holding a police handbook in his hand. This situation...

Roughly, Inspector Megure attempted to recreate the scene where the deceased himself took the police handbook. After comparing the two, Inspector Megure and the others belatedly realized that what Takato had said earlier seemed to be true.

This police manual doesn't look like the kind of thing Officer Shiba Ichiro would have taken out of his breast pocket after being attacked. Putting aside the points Takato just mentioned, even the way he took the manual is reversed.

At this point, Odagiri Toshiro and Inspector Megure's expressions immediately turned serious, and their gazes towards Takato became extremely earnest.

"So, Mr. Akechi, you think that this police handbook wasn't actually something Shiba Ichiro chose to use to identify the perpetrator after being attacked, but rather..."

Odagiri Toshiro said this, and Takato naturally responded:
"It must have been deliberately placed in the victim's hand by the murderer. Presumably, the murderer knew that the police interpreted the first victim's attempt to grab his right chest before dying as being related to the police handbook. So, in order to further mislead the police's subsequent investigation, the murderer simply used the logic that the police believed and deliberately took out the police handbook in the second incident as well. In doing so, the murderer completely misled the direction of the police investigation."

"But……"

After carefully considering this point, Inspector Megure couldn't help but ask a question with some doubt:
"To be honest, we believe that the action of Officer Nara clutching his chest before he died was related to information concerning the police handbook. This matter has not been made public, and apart from our own police staff and Mori-kun, who was the first to discover the incident, no one else should know about the police handbook. Moreover, I don't think Mori-kun and his team would reveal it."

"So, in the end, the problem actually lies within the police force, doesn't it?"

"If the killer were an insider, he obviously wouldn't have done that during the second attack, making the police suspect their own personnel, which would have made him easier to expose. So, logically speaking, only if the killer wasn't on Inspector Megure's list would he have had a reason to do that during the second attack."

Gao Yuan said this, and then analyzed it:

"Therefore, I think the murderer must be someone else who had access to inside information from the police force. Of course, it's also possible that a police officer involved in the investigation accidentally let slip this detail, which was then overheard by the murderer..."

"These are probably the few possibilities."

"Of course, that's not the main point. If the above analysis is correct, then we need to go back to the beginning of the first incident: what did Officer Narasawa's gesture of trying to grab his chest before he died signify? Clearly, given the current situation, it's almost certain that it wasn't a signal about the existence of the police handbook. So what could it mean?" Hearing this, Inspector Megure and Toshiro Odagiri both fell into a solemn silence—

Indeed, it was initially thought that Narasawa's actions were indicating the police manual in his breast pocket. However, it is now almost certain that in the second incident, the police manual in Shiba Ichiro's hand was deliberately placed there by the murderer. This means that the murderer did not care about the police investigating the police manual at all. In other words, he had realized that the police's judgment was wrong, so he went along with it and further misled the police investigation. In the end, it means that Narasawa's actions had another meaning.

But what could it be?

"Grabbed towards the right chest... If it doesn't refer to the handbook in the pocket where it was located, then I think that location might be referring to..."

At this point, Gao Yuan's gaze couldn't help but drift to Kazato Kyosuke, the man he had forcibly summoned here—

"heart."

Gao Yuan stated this explanation calmly and directly, which also made Odagiri Toshiro and Inspector Megure realize that a psychologist named Kazato Kyosuke was also present.

Cardiologist, psychologist?
It seems there might be some connection, but...

"Oh? So this Mr. Akechi summoned me here because of this?"

At this point, Kyosuke Kazato was basically certain of Takato's purpose, but his expression remained calm—

After all, he didn't believe Gao Yuan had any concrete evidence.

In response, Gao Yuan naturally said:

"It's hard to say, but I just felt that Dr. Kazato did treat Inspector Narasawa and was also Inspector Shiratori's attending physician, so that's why it suddenly came to my mind—"

"If it's your identity, at least you're Officer Shiratori's attending physician, so you should be able to occasionally get some inside information about the police, right?"

"Furthermore, I'm also very interested in why Officer Narasawa wanted to see you for a medical checkup."

As he said this, Gao Yuan looked at Inspector Megure:

"I just asked Dr. Kazato, and he said he sees too many patients to remember who's who. So, why not let him see Officer Narasawa's face? Maybe that will help him remember something!" (End of Chapter)