Conan Rick's Investigator

Human face models, silicone human skin masks, wigs...

The human skin mask put on one of the human face models is an old face with wrinkles all over it, drooping limply due to lack of support. But if you use some imagination, you can find that this is exactly the face of the longevity lady.

Qin Zhibo was looking around when he suddenly heard a voice behind him.

"I didn't expect you could find this place, Mr. Detective..."

Qin Zhibo looked back and saw Shimabukuro Kimie standing behind him.

At this time, Shimabukuro Kimie had just changed into the clothes of a longevity woman, and her knees, which were slightly red due to kneeling for a long time, were tied with leather straps.

Seeing the bandage and the injured knee, Qin Zhibo instantly understood why Shimabukuro Kimie was able to disguise herself as someone twice as short as herself.

Shimabukuro Kimie smiled lightly, walked past Qin Zhibo and walked into the workshop.

Her fingertips slid across the wooden signs and arrows on the table. She stared at the items on the table, as if beautiful memories were floating before her eyes.

"When I was in college, I formed a film club with Saori, Sumi, Naoko, and Rokuro. At that time, I was responsible for the props and makeup used in filming."

"How is it? This one I made is very realistic, right?"

Shimabukuro Kimie picked up an arrow from the table and asked Qin Zhibo with a smile.

Qin Zhibo was about to answer when he suddenly read a hint of emotion in Shimabukuro Kimie's eyes.

She wants to commit suicide!

In the blink of an eye, Shimabukuro Kimie raised the injured arrow and was about to stab it into her chest when Qin Zhibo rushed forward and grabbed her wrist.

Qin Zhibo twisted his hand and snatched the arrow from Shimabukuro Kimie's hand, then forcibly dragged her out of the workshop full of dangerous goods.

"Ms. Shimabukuro, what are you trying to do by committing suicide so eagerly?"

Qin Zhibo said as he closed the sliding door of the workshop behind him. "Are you trying to take the blame for all these crimes for the real murderer?"

As soon as she finished speaking, Shimabukuro Kimie's body trembled suddenly, and the sadness in her eyes suddenly turned into surprise, and her expression seemed to be asking "How did you know?"

Qin Zhibo smiled slightly, took out the phone he had just brought back from the fire scene from his pocket, and explained, "Actually, until ten minutes ago, I thought this was a conspiracy between you and your father to murder someone."

"But after reading the content of the phone call, I figured out what happened."

"Actually, this case isn't complicated at all. Your father, Shimabukuro Keikazu, first killed Kadowaki Saori, then used this phone to summon Ebina Sumi and Kuroe Naoko, and then murdered them one by one."

"The whole technique couldn't be simpler..."

As Qin Zhibo said, there was no trickery in the entire case.

Whether in the Mermaid Forest or on the beach, Shimabukuro Keikazu always uses a straightforward method of killing.

Throw Ebina Sumi's body into the waterfall and then hide in the forest.

There was also a case of strangling Naoko Kuroe and hanging her on a fishing net, which was then returned to the sea.

This was very easy for him because no one would suspect a man who had died in a shipwreck five years ago.

Listening to Qin Zhibo's statement, Shimabukuro Kimie's face was filled with surprise.

Qin Zhibo actually knew about his own father's existence. Although there was a chase in the Mermaid Forest that night, the forest was pitch black that day. Moreover, since they were strangers, their identities should not have been discovered...

"In fact, in the entire case, only the final fire was planned by you, and the purpose was probably to dispose of Saori Kadowaki's body..."

As Qin Zhibo was speaking, Shimabukuro Kimie smiled faintly, closed her eyes and shook her head.

"You're wrong about that, Detective..."

"Actually, I can't forgive them for killing my mother either. It's just that my father saw through my heart and took action beforehand."

"After the fire, the police will find that the teeth of the charred corpse are exactly the same as the dental molds I left in the dental clinic..."

Shimabukuro Kimie's self-disclosure reminded Qin Zhibo of what Shimabukuro Kimie said when they first met. Four days before Saori disappeared, he asked her to accompany him to the dentist.

As long as the patient is actually Saori Kadowaki, and the insurance card is replaced, the name of the owner of the tooth mold can be changed.

This shows that from that time on, Shimabukuro Kimie had murderous intentions in her heart.

Chapter 461 Fish Man

"Ms. Shimabukuro, the fire in the warehouse may take some time to put out. Could you please take me to see your father?"

Although it was a question, Qin Zhibo's tone was unquestionable.

Shimabukuro Kimie hesitated for a moment, but finally nodded.

"But please be prepared..."

……

Under her guidance, Qin Zhibo came to a hidden place in the back courtyard of the shrine, where there was a cellar door.

They opened the cellar door, stepped on the creaking wooden floor, and entered the cellar together.

"This is an air-raid shelter built during the war. Few people in the village know about this place..."

Following Shimabukuro Kimie's introduction, Qin Zhibo looked around and found that the space here was indeed very large.

In the deepest part of the space, a faint light from an oil lamp illuminated a corner, and a figure stood beside it.

"Jun Hui..."

"Is it Jun Hui?"

The man made a sound, and Shimabukuro Kimie responded softly, "It's me, father..."

"The person next to you is..."

"It's the detective you met in the forest yesterday."

The man's body seemed to be stunned by surprise, and he stood stiffly in place until Qin Zhibo gradually approached.

In the dim light, the man's body appeared strangely deformed.

His body had human-like features, but the spine of his back was bent like a bow. One of his arms exposed under his short sleeves was shiny and smooth, with the skin color of a newborn baby, while the other arm was covered with light blue scales.

These were exactly the same scales that Qin Zhibo had seen in the forest and on the beach.

The strangest thing is the head. Half of the face is a normal human face, but in the left eye there is a huge eyeball that is so protruding that the eyelid cannot close, and the skin nearby is also gray-green.

On both sides of the neck, there were several indeterminate gaps in the flesh. As the man's breathing quickened due to nervousness, the gaps in the flesh seemed to be wriggling and trembling.

Qin Zhibo: Will -2

……

Seeing the detective who had once tracked him, Shimabukuro Keikazu could not hide the surprise on his face. He stepped back slightly, subconsciously trying to cover up the terrible signs of transformation and the unpleasant fishy smell on his body.

But at this moment, Qin Zhibo actually stretched out his hand against common sense.

"Hello, Mr. Shimabukuro."

Faced with the hand extended by Qin Zhibo, Shimabukuro Keikazu was extremely shocked. After hesitating for a moment, he wiped his hand, whose webbed fingers had not yet faded, on his clothes and then held Qin Zhibo's hand.

When the two hands touched each other, Qin Zhibo began his investigation.

Shimabukuro Keikazu, male, 52 years old, social credit score 0...all kinds of human information are available.

"Detective...you..."

Shimabukuro Keiwa hesitated, but his daughter beside him easily resolved his doubts.

"Mr. Qin already knows everything."

"Oh... I see..." Shimabukuro Keikazu reacted, and his head, which was already lowered because he was embarrassed to see people, lowered even deeper.

"Actually, I don't know exactly. For example, why did you kill those three people?"

The three people Qin Zhibo mentioned were naturally Saori Kadowaki, Sumi Ebihara, and Naoko Kuroe.

Under Qin Zhibo's questioning, Shimabukuro Keikazu explained his motive.

"All this is to avenge Naoko..."

"Naoko has been working hard to play the role of the longevity goddess for the prosperity of this small island. But three years ago, because they couldn't draw arrows, they got drunk and set fire to the shrine's warehouse..."

"When they saw Naoko disguised as the Longevity Lady walking into the warehouse, they wanted to test whether she was truly immortal."

"Back then, Naoko faked her own death and sacrificed her original identity to stay on this island in order to play the role of the longevity lady..."

"She really loves this island and has given so much to it, but she never expected something like this to happen..."

Deeply moved, Shimabukuro Keikazu shed tears of pain.

Shimabukuro Kimie walked over to her father, patted his shoulder to comfort him, and then looked up and added, "I didn't know about this at first, but after Saori lost the arrow, she came to me and asked for it. She also said that if I didn't have it, I could tell her about the mermaid's tomb. She also wanted to gain the ability to survive being surrounded by flames..."

"That's clearly my mother's grave..."

After explaining the whole motive, Qin Zhibo roughly understood what kind of story this was.

Feudal superstition kills people...

However, looking at the half-human, half-fish Shimabukuro Keikazu in front of him, Qin Zhibo felt that he was not so superstitious.

What they believe in may actually exist, but it's just not as beautiful as they imagined...

Qin Zhibo looked at Shimabukuro Keikazu and asked, "Then your body..."

The topic finally turned to his own body, and Shimabukuro Keikazu lowered his head as if accepting his fate.

"First, the eyeballs gradually bulged until they couldn't close. Then the skin turned gray-green, became cold and damp, and scales gradually grew..."

"Then webbed flesh sprouted between the five fingers, the skin on the back of the neck became increasingly wrinkled, and finally, structures resembling fish gills formed..."

"This is a disease unique to the island. Kimie's great-grandmother, Shimabukuro Mikoto, mentioned it when she was still alive. Some people on the island used to develop this strange ichthyosis between the ages of 20 and 40. Within just two to three months, they'd become neither human nor ghostly."

"In the past, people had no treatment for this disease, and the villagers were very afraid, so they would give the sick people a boat and enough food to send them off the island to fend for themselves."

Qin Zhibo nodded, knowing that this was called making a living on one's own, to put it nicely, but in fact it was exile.

"I thought it was just a horror story passed down by the older generation, but five years ago, my body suddenly started to behave strangely and turned into this horrible appearance."

"Saori's mother and Rokuro's mother also fell ill at the same time..." Shimabukuro Keiwa raised his head so Qin Zhibo could see his face. "We saw that we couldn't hide the truth anymore, so we decided to follow our old routine and leave the island together by boat."

"Originally, Naoko wanted to leave with us, but I persuaded her to leave. Kojima and Kimie, whom she loved since childhood, are here, so she can't leave."

"After more than half a month at sea, we encountered a storm and the boat capsized. I and two other people fell into the sea."

"When I woke up again, I was washed up on an uninhabited island shaped like a turtle."

"There was an abandoned villa on the island, so I moved in. Using the few tools left in the villa, I lived a solitary life there, fishing every day."

"But one day half a month later, while I was still asleep, several bandits suddenly broke into the island and captured me."

"It seems the bandits just stole some treasure from the mayor's house nearby and are discussing where to hide it on the island..."

Chapter 462 Another Type A Drug?

The flames in the shrine's warehouse were still burning fiercely, as if determined to burn everything inside to ashes.

In the face of this unstoppable flame, Hattori Heiji gradually regained his composure, staring at the flame for a long time without being able to speak.

Conan, who was standing nearby, glanced at Hattori Heiji, then looked around and found that there seemed to be fewer people among the crowd.

Where is Qin Zhibo?

……

In the shrine's air-raid shelter, Shimabukuro Keikazu was still explaining his experience to Qin Zhibo.

"After I was captured by the bandits, they planned to kill me, but one of the female bandits said I was still useful to her and wanted to spare my life."

"Later, when no one was around, the female bandit took off her hood and gloves. The skin underneath began to turn gray-green, and one of her eyes bulged slightly..."

"That girl had the same disease as me, and she became a bandit in order to cure herself."

Shimabukuro Keikazu's voice became increasingly hoarse. He picked up the water cup on the table next to him and took a sip, then poured the rest into the flesh of his neck before his voice recovered.

"Later, I was imprisoned on the island by a bandit. Not long after, the female bandit came back."

"She used the stolen money to buy a drug abroad that was said to be able to cure this disease, but she wasn't sure, so she wanted to use me as an experiment first."

"Less than a day after I took the drug, the scales on my body began to fall off, and my eyeballs slowly retracted. Not long after, the gray-green color of my body also began to fade. In about a week, I became very similar to a normal person."