Traveling back thirty years to Conan, intercepting Princess Eri

Chapter 15 Air Conditioning Temperature
"Huh?" Maori Kogoro asked gloomily, "Can't we use something else?"

"The things in the judo club's activity room may be related to the case, so you can't touch them," Lin Xiuyi explained. "Just bear with it for a while."

"...What bad luck," Kogoro Mouri complained softly as he unbuckled his belt.

Seeing Lin Xiu walking towards him with a belt in one hand, Vice Principal Inoue asked angrily, "What do you want to do?"

"Principal Inoue, you don't believe it, let's try it..."

At this point, Lin Xiuyi had already dodged behind the vice principal and strangled him with a belt.

“…You’ll know.”

Feeling the tightening and suffocation on his neck, Vice Principal Inoue subconsciously began to struggle.

This lasted for two or three seconds, and then Lin Xiuyi let go of the belt in his hand.

"Cough, cough cough...you bastard!" Vice Principal Inoue coughed and cursed.

"Everyone, look at the vice-principal's neck. Are the strangle marks facing backward? As for the upward strangle marks..."

As Lin Xiuyi spoke, he raised the belt again. Seeing this, Vice Principal Inoue quickly hid aside, and the other teachers did the same.

"Let me do it," Dr. Kobayashi took the initiative to step forward.

Dr. Kobayashi was a beauty, so Lin Xiuyi naturally couldn't treat her as roughly as he did to Vice Principal Inoue, so he just placed the belt loosely under her chin.

"If they were hanged, the marks would face upwards due to the body's gravity," Lin Xiuyi explained. "Even if the deceased regretted their actions and began to struggle desperately, the marks would still only face upwards. There's no way they could face backwards."

"Besides, the marks left by suicide by hanging are usually U-shaped,"

"When someone strangles you from behind, the U-shaped opening tightens because the strangler exerts force."

"You can see two clear strangulation marks on the deceased's neck, one pointing upwards and the other pointing backwards. The former is U-shaped, while the latter has a tightened opening."

"This means that the deceased was strangled from behind and then hung."

"Principal Inoue, do you understand my experiment?" Lin Xiuyi raised his belt with a half-smile, "If you don't understand, we can..."

"I understand, I understand..." Although the vice principal was annoyed, he could only nod, "Since it was murder, then who is the murderer?"

"It's not clear yet, we need to continue investigating," Lin Xiuyi said as a matter of course.

"You!" The vice principal rolled his eyes in anger, but there was nothing he could do.

At this time, the police officers from the Forensic Department had finished examining the body of the deceased and came forward to report to Inspector Samezaki.

"...The body has just started to show signs of rigor mortis. Preliminary assessment suggests the time of death is around one to two hours."

"It's 4:16 pm now," Inspector Samezaki checked his watch. "That means the victim was killed between 2:16 and 3:16 pm."

"Principal Inoue, I hope you will cooperate with the investigation of students who were not in the classroom during this period, teachers and staff who were not at their posts, especially those who had contact with the deceased."

"...Okay." The vice principal glanced at Lin Xiuyi and took the teachers downstairs to cooperate with the police investigation.

Lin Xiuyi walked to the air conditioner at the back of the activity room.

"Shuichi, have you discovered something new?" Kogoro Mouri poked his friend with his elbow curiously.

"Look over there, aren't there quite a few water stains?" Lin Xiuyi pointed under the air conditioner. "Indeed, there is water," Maori Kogoro stood on tiptoe to take a look. "But air conditioners sometimes drip condensation, that's normal, right?"

"Idiot, condensation only occurs when the temperature changes dramatically and the air conditioner is still running," Kisaki Eri said unhappily. "Is the air conditioner in your judo club's activity room always on?"

"No," Maori Kogoro hurriedly shook his head, "I was the one who turned off the air conditioner last night. I remember it very clearly."

"Normally, we have classes during the day and there won't be any club activities," Hibiki Eri speculated, "Could it be that the murderer turned on the air conditioner?"

"But why did the murderer turn on the air conditioner?" Maori Kogoro asked puzzledly, "Is it too hot?"

While the two of them were talking, Hayashi Shuichi had already asked Inspector Megure for a glove. After putting it on, he found the remote control and turned on the switch.

As the air conditioner started running, the set temperature, 16 degrees, was also displayed on the wired remote control.

"16 degrees? That's not right," Maori Kogoro said in surprise, "No matter how hot it is, it can't be set so low. I remember that the air conditioner should have been 28 degrees yesterday."

"Why would the murderer turn the air conditioner temperature so low for no reason?" asked Eri Kisaki in confusion.

"Temperature affects a lot of things,"

Lin Xiuyi looked in the direction of the air conditioner outlet and saw that less than two meters away was where the deceased was hung.

"Kogoro, when you came in, was the air conditioner on or off?"

"Well..." Maori Kogoro scratched his head awkwardly, "When I saw Doi-senpai hanging there, my mind was completely blank. I couldn't think of anything else."

"After you left, has Minister Hoshino been in the activity room all the time?" Lin Xiuyi asked after thinking for a while.

"I don't know," Maori Kogoro shook his head, "but when I brought Dr. Kobayashi back, he was still the only one in the activity room."

"How long were you away?"

"About two or three minutes," Maori Kogoro estimated. "I didn't know Doi-senpai was dead at the time. I thought if I could find Dr. Kobayashi, maybe he could be saved, so I ran as fast as I could."

"Shuichi, do you suspect the murderer is the head of the judo club?" asked Eri Kisaki in a low voice.

"It's hard to say," Lin Xiuyi mused, "We're still missing crucial evidence."

"Could the murderer be the captain?" Maori Kogoro hesitated. "I heard from the seniors that Captain Hoshino and Senior Doi were best friends. Last summer, in the national league, they both represented Teitan. Senior Doi won second place, and Captain Hoshino made it to the quarterfinals."

"They're so good?" Hibiki Eri asked in surprise, "Then why didn't they even make it to the top 16 this year?"

"The seniors in the judo club might know a little about the reason behind this," Maori Kogoro said helplessly, "but none of them are willing to tell us."

Lin Xiuyi didn't say anything else, but walked to the body of Doi Hayato again.

If someone suddenly grabbed his neck from behind, the deceased would definitely fight back desperately...

Thinking of this, Lin Xiu began to carefully examine the fingers of the corpse, and finally saw some light red powder in the gap between the nails of his right index finger.

Lin Xiuyi called a police officer from the forensic department and asked him to pick it out from between his fingers.

"These are probably fragments of flesh and blood," the police officer confirmed after carefully examining them for a while. "They might have been scraped off the murderer's body with the victim's fingernails while he was struggling."

(End of this chapter)