Conan: Chief of Rice Flower's Science Points

Chapter 151 Refrigeration
"Hello, I do this..." Shiraishi took out his police officer ID and swiped it in front of the hotel front desk.

"Ah! Yes... How can I help you?" The lady boss at the front desk was startled and looked up at Shiraishi and asked, not caring whether she saw the ID clearly or not.

"It's like this. Have there been two girls staying here recently? One of them is this person...she should have lost contact now." Shiraishi said, showing the portrait to the front desk on his tablet.

"Two young girls... There haven't been any such guests staying in the past month. This portrait... I'm sorry, I don't have any impression of it, and no guests have suddenly lost contact." The receptionist shook her head after identifying them.

"Do you have horse meat curry here?" Shiraishi asked just in case.

"Ah? This...if you want to eat it, you can have it." The proprietress said hesitantly.

This kind of small hotel doesn't have a fixed menu. They usually have a "set meal", which means the guests eat whatever the boss cooks.

But we have horse meat and curry here, so if the customers really want to eat them, it’s not impossible…

"No, nothing." Seeing that she didn't look like she had done this before, Bai Shi didn't stop but rushed to the next house.

Shiraishi checked five hotels in the morning...

After all, the pillar industry of the entire Arima Town is "hot springs", and small hot spring hotels for families are everywhere!
At around eleven o'clock in the morning, Shiraishi received a call from Ayako, so he made an appointment with Otaki to meet at the hotel where Ayako and Misumi were resting, to have lunch and summarize the clues.

Although I only booked a room in the hotel, I also ordered lunch for ten people.

After all, the group includes one adult man, one adolescent man, two adult women, and one adult Shiraishi Kuro, which is just the right number for ten people.

While eating, Shiraishi shared clues with Otaki and Hattori, and found out...

Only Hattori gained something!

Thanks to Shiraishi's portrait, a shop owner still remembered the girl.

"The uncle in the store said that on Tuesday, he caught a girl stealing a bento. When they were arguing and wanted to call the police, the deceased took the initiative to pay the fee and directly threw out a 10,000 yuan bill. Then he took the girl away... I took the surveillance video at the front desk! It looks like it is indeed the same person." Hattori described at this time.

"You don't care about money... It really sounds like..." Otaki felt that this was consistent with the deceased's "suicidal tendencies."

"Could it be that the girl who stole the things is the Matsukura Hana who ran away from home? You still have the contact information of the Matsukura family, right?" Shiraishi said, looking at Sancheng.

"Yeah!" Sancheng nodded quickly.

Afterwards, Hattori sent the video to Misumi, who sent it to Tokai Lin who was on duty today, and asked her to find the Matsukura couple who had come to identify the body.

"Hattori, have you found any other clues near the store?" Otaki confirmed with Hattori.

"No... None of the nearby hotels have any information about this lady's stay, and no one has seen her." Hattori said helplessly.

The so-called not seeing her means that he had no impression of her - the store owner only had an impression of her because of the "theft incident". Otherwise, in a tourist destination like Arima with a lot of people coming and going, it is impossible for people to have an impression of every person they meet on the street.

"Check for suspicious vehicles in Toudu..." Otaki looked at Shiraishi and asked.

Although he knew that since Shiraishi didn't mention it, there must be no clues, Otaki still asked.

As expected, Bai Shi shook his head and said, "We have confirmed everything. There is nothing suspicious."

"Then after dinner, let's go to the store that Hattori discovered and continue looking!" Otaki said encouragingly.

However, Shiraishi was silent for a moment, and then said, "Could we have made a mistake before? We have always believed that the unknown deceased lady and Xiaohua had agreed to commit suicide, came to Arima Town, and then someone took the opportunity to kidnap her. The other party killed the unknown lady and may have threatened Xiaohua's safety...

"But the deceased died in the early hours of Wednesday morning. If she and Xiaohua only met on Tuesday night, they probably didn't commit suicide together!"

Hattori also rushed to say: "That's right! It seems that the deceased lady came to Arima alone with the intention of committing suicide, and the lady suspected to be Xiaohua just ran away from home.

"If this is the case, the deceased lady was probably already with the person who instigated her suicide when she arrived in Arima. However, because she realized that the other party was going to harm Miss Xiaohua, the deceased lady resisted and asked for help before she was killed.

"Damn it... If only I could know the data of that shitty forum!"

Hattori couldn't help himself at this point and cursed.

At present, we only know that in most cases the deceased were "hunted" on that suicide forum. Some perverts look for those who want to commit suicide and satisfy their perverted desires in the name of "assisted suicide". They may even instigate suicide online for this purpose!

However, since these forums are usually registered overseas, once they are closed, unless you can physically control the other party's storage terminal, you will not be able to obtain their data at all...

At this time, Shiraishi Kuro also "storm inhaled" at a speed several times faster than the other four people. After quickly finishing lunch, the five of them came to the store where Hattori had found the clue before, and prepared to start from here and investigate separately!

After all, this is the only place where clues were found, and since the deceased came to this store, his residence should be not far from here.

And just then...

"Huh?" Shiraishi was stunned when he looked at the bento rice balls in the refrigerator, then he walked over.

"Ah! Xiao Hei, aren't you full? We can eat on the way..." Ayako was afraid that Shiraishi would be hungry.

Hattori rolled his eyes to the sky - how many servings did he eat? He's still not full?
"No, this rice ball is..."

Shiraishi just noticed that this rice ball is "glowing"!
It wasn't the kind of light that "Little Chef" shone, but... [Insight] made it shine! Bai Shi knew there must be a clue, so he hurried forward to check, and soon found...

"Horse meat curry rice balls?" Shiraishi discovered the "category" of this thing.

"what?"

"Is there really such a thing?"

"Boss! Is there any other place to buy this?"

Everyone came forward to check it out and asked the boss in surprise.

The shop owner looked at Otaki, then at Shiraishi, and obviously didn't dare to complain. He could only say awkwardly, "Only I sell it! This... ordinary people can't appreciate it, but it's not illegal, right?"

"Boss! The girl who stole something that day, couldn't she have stolen this?" Hattori asked hurriedly.

"No! I stole the new ramen!" the boss said unhappily - he would rather steal the spicy instant noodles from Peninsula people than steal the special rice balls made by me... What does she mean?
"It was Tuesday morning, and the time of death was Wednesday morning...they must have come to buy it in the evening." Shiraishi judged from the digestion state of the residue in the stomach that this should have been dinner.

"The dead?" The boss was shocked.

"Who bought rice balls on Tuesday afternoon and evening?" Shiraishi stared at him and asked.

"Well... I don't remember, but the horse meat rice balls are usually sold out last." The boss murmured.

Upon hearing this, Shiraishi looked at Otaki.

Immediately, the two of them went out and looked around...

"If the horse meat rice balls were bought by the hostage-taker and were the last food the victim ate before he died..."

"Then the place where he lives must be nearby!"

Just then, a cold storage truck stopped in front of the store, and the driver got out and bought rice balls from the store, but they were not made of horse meat.

Seeing this, Hattori seemed to have discovered something and asked quickly: "Hmm? Master, what do you do for a living?"

"Huh? Can't you see? Truck driver!" The driver rolled his eyes as he paid the bill.

"Driver...Driver...Inspector Otaki! Cold storage truck!" Hattori said hurriedly to Otaki.

At the same time, Bai Shi had already walked to the back of the other party's carriage.

"Hey...what are you doing?" The driver wanted to stop them, but...he was still a little hesitant to step forward.

"We do this, check it out." Otaki stepped forward and showed him his ID.

Seeing this, the driver muttered quietly: "Isn't this the Osaka Prefectural Police..."

But he didn't dare to refuse, after all... he was going to Osaka!
After Bai Shi opened the door of the cold storage compartment and looked inside, he found that there was indeed no corpse or anything like that.

This cold storage truck mainly gave the two people a hint!
"How many cold storage trucks like this do you have?" Bai Shi asked after getting off.

"Ah? I didn't know that... Xue Nan Cold Chain Transport has a branch here, so they should have quite a few, right?" The driver didn't seem to be a local and was just speculating.

"Snow man?" Bai Shi immediately repeated it upon hearing it.

"yes……"

Hattori looked at the refrigerated truck again, then seemed to have thought of something and immediately said, "Director Shiraishi..."

Before Hattori could finish his words, Shiraishi immediately called the phone again: "Section Chief Kunikida, the traffic cameras that you said you would check before... expand the search time, check from the back to the front... especially the cold storage trucks, send me the license plate number directly after you find them!"

That’s right, Hattori and Shiraishi also reacted at this time.

There is another possibility...

The victim was not locked up in Arima and frozen to death and then transported to Toudou, but was frozen to death on the way!

As long as there is a cold storage truck, this can be done.

In addition...

Even if they did not freeze to death on the road, the entire cold chain transportation would delay the time of death, and the actual time of death should be earlier!

In this way, the time required for traffic monitoring screening will be longer.

"【Snow Man】Cold Chain Transportation... Could it be that what was written on the paper actually refers to this 'Snow Man'?" Sancheng also understood at this time - the blurry paper in the deceased's stomach also had "Snow Man" written on it...

(End of this chapter)