No one understands the laws of Collider better than me.

[Follow-up cleaning crews will be coming; you can leave now. —Armagnac]

After replying to the text message, I continued to review the attached documents. Through interrogating the group of thugs, I learned that they were members of the Ghost Tiger Gang. The gang's leaders had recently been successfully prosecuted by a prosecutor and were mostly in prison. The remaining thugs, who were all muscle and no brains, kidnapped a shooting athlete and his girlfriend to avenge their boss, forcing him to assassinate the prosecutor who was on his way to take the Heisei Express at 1 p.m. on the 29th.

After reading the whole story, Kitahara Masaki was speechless.

To want to kill someone, you kidnap someone else to kill them instead—it's like having a direct route to the destination but choosing a longer, more circuitous one. And to avenge your boss, you hand the task over to someone you have no connection to.

From the perspective of the core members of the organization, the Japanese gangsters are just a rabble, but for the lower-level members, they are a good source of experience. Therefore, most of the title missions in Japan are about dealing with gangsters. In fact, there are also missions about dealing with politicians and capitalists, but for the organization that has not yet gained a foothold in Japan, the strategy of winning them over is still the priority.

This operation essentially made the lower-level personnel work for free, while the cleanup crew managed to recover all the gang's firearms and explosives, which can be considered a profitable operation.

After sorting out the clues, Kitahara Masaki had already figured out how to play a trick on Conan.

Chapter 8 One Flew Over the Asylum

It's Friday today.

Kitahara Masaki brushed his teeth after getting up, and the calendar clearly stated 'Operation Savage Garden'.

The news that the remaining members of the Ghost Tiger Gang had completely disappeared finally reached the Japanese police. However, after seeing that the two kidnapped people were safe and sound, they did not follow up on the matter and completely failed to notice the disappearance of the firearms and explosives.

They are as careless as elementary school students.

After finishing processing the documents in the morning, Kitahara Masaki hung the 'Out' sign on the attendance board and headed to the pharmaceutical group where Miyano Shiho worked.

----------------

3:45 pm

Using the excuse of taking a break, Shiho Miyano walked into the garden full of plants. This place was one of the few places where she could look up and see the sky. Shiho Miyano often came here to drink coffee, clear her mind, and stop thinking about how many people her drugs had killed.

"How exactly will that pervert reclaim this USB drive?"

Faced with the sudden appearance of Kitahara Masaki, Miyano Shiho had no choice but to trust him, believing that the organization behind him would be interested in her intelligence, which would give her a chance to rescue her sister.

She knew very well that although she was called a genius girl, she was still inferior to her parents. The organization had only assigned her to take over the drug development because she was very familiar with her parents' research. If she lost her value to the organization, both she and her sister would be in great danger.

Since the other party is willing to expose their identity to find her, it means that the force opposing the organization is eager for the APTX-4869 data, which can also become a bargaining chip for her to negotiate with them.

As Shiho Miyano thought to herself, she never expected that Masaki Kitahara would not play by the rules at all.

The hands of the lady's watch struck four o'clock, but still no one in the garden showed any interest in approaching her to speak.

"Ha, yes, if they were that capable, how could the organization have survived until now?"

She opened her palm, looked at the USB drive in her hand, and said self-deprecatingly.

Snapped!

Suddenly, a dark shadow flashed by and snatched the USB drive from Shiho Miyano's hand.

Eh!

She looked up at the sky and saw a white dove flying in the air, clutching a USB drive. Before she could react, the dove had already disappeared without a trace.

That's it!

The Savage Garden was actually a well-trained homing pigeon. Only one white pigeon would not arouse the suspicion of the patrolling security personnel, and only a USB flash drive could be caught by a homing pigeon; if it were a hard disk or CD, it would be damaged during transportation.

Shiho Miyano tucked her wind-blown hair behind her ear and revealed a rare smile. At this moment, she was finally willing to believe that Masaki Kitahara was capable of fighting against the organization.

------------------

call.

Kitahara Masaki breathed a sigh of relief, looking at the carrier pigeon perched on his hand, a smile involuntarily spreading across his face. This carrier pigeon was something he had personally trained over several years, and for this purpose he had visited several great magicians in the United States. If this were a cultivation novel, this carrier pigeon would be his spirit pet.

He carefully put away the USB drive, not in a hurry to open it. Even if he did, he probably wouldn't be able to understand a single one of the biochemistry articles inside. In his previous life, he majored in humanities during his undergraduate and graduate studies, and he couldn't understand those fancy enzymes, acids, and the like at all.

After many years, I feel the helplessness of being 'illiterate' again.

It was already past four in the afternoon. Although Kitahara Maki wanted to go straight home, he still had to play the role of a policeman, so he picked up a newspaper and sat back down in his office to read it slowly.

The cover featured those kids: Conan, Ayumi, Mitsuhiko, and Genta. The newspaper praised the children for successfully catching the escaped jewel thief, and the superintendent even personally presented them with certificates of merit.

"Oh! These kids have been extremely active lately, and they've helped our police catch a criminal who committed multiple crimes."

As Kitahara Masaki listened to the police officer in front of him happily recounting the exploits of the Junior Detective League, he seemed completely unaware that the criminals, whom even the police had failed to catch, had been apprehended by the children—meaning that the police were utterly incompetent.

The current timeline is still in the early stages of the Detective Conan story, and the internet is not as developed as it was in the previous life. If you wait until later and see the outrageous arguments of people having fun online, you probably won't be able to laugh anymore.

"Takagi! Kitahara, buddy! We have a case! A factory owner has been murdered!"

"Yes!"

Officer Takagi, who had just been chatting and laughing with Kitahara, hurriedly grabbed his coat and phone and ran out with Officer Megure.

Kitahara Maki silently glanced at the clock and realized that there were still five minutes left before he could leave work, but a case still came in.

Alright, I hereby announce that I'm going to use this prisoner to farm achievements.

Upon arriving at the scene, police tape had already been set up around the perimeter. Inside the factory, a man was found lying on the ground with a knife stuck in his back. A safe not far from the room had been pried open, and its contents were scattered all over the floor.

"Takagi, tell me what's going on."

“Okay. The deceased was the factory owner, Hisashi Ishikura, who was fifty years old. Although the factory was closed today, I heard that Mr. Ishikura came to inspect the finished products. There were obvious traces of self-adhesive tape on his mouth and wrists, and the money in the safe had been almost completely taken.”

Were there any eyewitnesses near the scene of the crime?

Upon hearing Kitahara Masaki's question, Takagi quickly flipped through his notebook and replied:

"No, there's an old lady who runs a cigarette shop not far from the back gate of the factory. She said she didn't see anyone suspicious pass by."

"Has anything happened around here? Could it be related to those kids again?"

"Well, Officer Kitahara, you guessed right. There was a car accident near this factory. The driver hit a little girl and fled the scene, but soon turned himself in at the police station. And that little girl is Yoshida Ayumi from the Junior Detective Club."

"Is she alright?"

She's alright!

This time, however, the answer did not come from Officer Takagi, but from the familiar lisp.

Kitahara Masaki turned around and saw Uncle Mori leading three children into the scene, as if they were returning to their own home.

Upon seeing the Grim Reaper duo, Kitahara Masaki immediately realized that the driver who fled but then turned himself in must be the murderer. As for the evidence, the Detective Conan world would provide its own explanation.

"Brother Kitahara! We encountered a traffic accident today, and the driver..."

"Alright! Conan, you don't need to say anything more."

Kitahara Masaki smiled. Seeing the group of kids appear and considering what Takagi had just said about the traffic accident, this was just a proof problem.

Uncle Mori misunderstood Kitahara Masaki, thinking the police were unhappy that he was letting a child in and out of the scene so casually. He punched Conan, silencing him, and then carried Conan, who was clutching his surreal bag, out of the room.

"Brother Kitahara, what have you discovered?"

"Oh, Inspector Megure, I have confirmed the identity of the perpetrator. Now, I request that all officers on site conduct a thorough search of the factory."

"No problem, everyone heard that, right? Go and find out the truth about this factory!"

Inspector Megure waved his hand, feeling incredibly satisfied that he didn't need to think and only needed to give orders.

Chapter 9 It's been a long time since I've had an anesthetic shot.

Soon, the police officers, eager to get off work, searched the entire factory and found a car in a closed warehouse.

It wouldn't be unusual to have a car parked in a warehouse, but what happened was that the license plate of this car was exactly the same as the license plate of the vehicle involved in the hit-and-run accident this afternoon.

"Call those three children over here."

The three children, who thought they had no chance to appear, excitedly ran over with Officer Takagi. Before they could even get a good look at him, they exclaimed:

"Why is the car that hit Ayumi this afternoon here?"

"Is the car that hit Ayumi this afternoon the same one as this one?"

Upon hearing Kitahara Masaki's question, the three kids nodded, and Conan also pointed out the differences:

"The car that person drove when he went to turn himself in this afternoon didn't have any mud on it, but this car has very obvious mud on it!"

"Mud?"

"Yes! There was still wet mud in the alley we went through while chasing this car, and there were tire tracks on that road."

Upon hearing this, Kitahara Masaki naturally understood Conan's meaning and reconstructed the events—the perpetrator first hit and ran, the car was covered in mud from the road, then the perpetrator parked it in this warehouse, went into the factory and killed the victim, then drove another car to pretend to turn himself in, so that his only crime would be hit and run, thus avoiding suspicion of murder.

The case is actually quite complex, but for Kitahara Maki, who is familiar with the laws of Detective Conan, solving the case is basically either a matter of choosing one of three options or a proof problem.

"Inspector Megure, please have someone bring that driver over. There are two cars here with the same license plate, which is obviously suspicious. Bring him over to the scene and put some pressure on him, and he might confess."

"Okay, Takagi-kun, it's up to you now."

"Yes!"

Poor Patrol Chief Takagi Wataru, with two superiors at the inspector level opposite him, he could only run errands.

"Brother Kitahara, have you figured out the cause and effect of this matter so quickly?"

Conan thought he had the upper hand in intelligence and could put on a show of sleeping Kogoro in front of Kitahara Masaki, but less than thirty minutes after he arrived, it seemed like he had already locked onto the culprit.

Kitahara Masaki chuckled as he rubbed the surreal bump on Conan's head, replying:

"When we police do our work, we don't need you detectives to reconstruct the whole incident and the murder method. We just need to find evidence that proves the suspect is the murderer."

Hmm, that makes sense. Conan really didn't expect that Kitahara Masaki didn't care about the details of the case at all. As long as the real culprit could be caught, everything else would be fine.

The suspect was quickly brought over from the police station. Kitahara Masaki immediately sensed that this person was not a good person: messy hair, a dirty floral shirt, a shiny gold chain, and his eyes darting around after he entered the scene.

"Kenichi Higashido, come over here and see if this car is yours."

When the suspect, Kenichi Shishido, saw the car he had been hiding, his eyes narrowed, clearly not expecting the Japanese police to be so efficient. He truly lived up to his title of 'Demon King Who Ends the Savior,' but even so, the police still had no evidence of his crime.

"Yeah, it was just a car we used to play with."

"Hehe, do you think the police don't have enough evidence to arrest you yet? Actually, we already have solid evidence, it just depends on whether you're willing to confess."

Kitahara Masaki stood in front of him, looking down at the suspect who was only 1.6 meters tall with utter contempt.

"I...I don't know what you're talking about?"

"The evidence that could lead to your arrest is on your own person, yet you think that exposing this car doesn't matter. Leaving behind a car that can only be considered circumstantial evidence is not enough for the police to convict you."

Kitahara Masaki fanned himself with a document, blowing the air onto the suspect, who only felt a chill and a sense of insignificance in front of this recently famous police officer.