New Clue

"Chief." Akasaka sounded excited; he had clearly found something.

"Patrol Officer Fuji came too? How did it go?" Shiraishi glanced at Fujisato Seiko in puzzlement.

Fujisato Seiko was the fourth SR in all of Beika Police Station!

[Fujisato Seiko (Beika Police Station Police Box Patrol Officer):

Age: 26. Overall Rating: SR.

Mind: Justice (65), Principles (66), Gentleness (33), Subjectivity (71), Passion (60), Tenacity (75).

Body: Healthy, Obsessive. Skills: Deduction (SR), Evidence Collection (SR), Interrogation (R), Combat (R)...

Potential: Enormous, with a tendency toward frontline detective work.]

Thus, after seeing her attributes, Shiraishi immediately checked her record—why was an SR working as a patrol officer at a police box? Looking at her skill distribution, it did not seem like the station had failed to recognize talent.

After all, abilities such as [Deduction] and [Evidence Collection] required frequent fieldwork to develop.

Sure enough, Shiraishi discovered that Fujisato Seiko had only been transferred to the police box within the past two months. Before that, she had been the ace of the Criminal Affairs Division!

And the reason for her transfer...

Workplace bullying?

Given her [Justice] and [Principles], Shiraishi felt that was unlikely. After confirming it with Chief Ebihara, he learned...

Fujisato Seiko had volunteered for the transfer. The real reason was known to quite a few veteran officers: she wanted to investigate a case involving her friend.

It was only officially recorded as "workplace bullying," though she really had beaten Yamada up before her transfer...

Otherwise, she should have recused herself from a case involving her friend. Let alone being specifically transferred to the corresponding police box for that very case.

That was why the old chief had not specifically mentioned it to Shiraishi at first, and why Shiraishi had not brought up transferring her back afterward...

After all, the "Body" category in the attribute panel seemingly included mental and physical health. Fujisato's entry bore the tag [Obsessive], showing that her mental state was already somewhat unstable. At a time like this, it was better to guide her than force her...

But now, seeing Fujisato Seiko arrive with Akasaka as if they had something to report, Shiraishi was still somewhat surprised.

"I specifically asked Patrol Officer Fuji to help earlier. We found this clue thanks to her as well..." Akasaka hurriedly explained.

That afternoon, Akasaka and Tosaka had gone to Beika Park, hoping to verify Tsubokura's claimed alibi.

The two of them searched through every accessible surveillance feed nearby, but none had an angle on the small plaza where the coffee truck was located. The cameras along the roadside also had not captured Tsubokura entering or leaving—it only meant they could not prove he had been there, not that they could prove he had not. After all, the cameras did not cover every route.

So they could only question the previous witness again—the coffee truck's clerk.

However...

"Given the serious public criticism we're facing right now, if we questioned him ourselves, reporters might photograph us and stir up more rumors. So we had Patrol Officer Fuji question him instead..." Akasaka explained.

Both Akasaka and Tosaka had rather intimidating temperaments. They would not have looked out of place in a criminal gang. Approaching "a witness who had previously been suspected of being misled by the police" at a time like this would indeed invite criticism.

So Akasaka had asked Fujisato Seiko to help after she got off work. Naturally, he knew about her capabilities. And judging by her appearance alone, no one would ever think she was a mother tyrannosaur...

Fuji had readily agreed. Posing as an ordinary person—more specifically, a "fan of a righteous witness standing up against the police"—she confirmed the details with the "cute clerk."

"Ah! You're the cute clerk who testified for that wrongly accused boy?"

"What exactly happened then? I'm so curious!"

"You're amazing, mister. You actually remembered something from so long ago..."

"Was it stressful when you testified in court?"

"I see. Keep it up..."

"Urgh..." Fuji suddenly gagged in the chief's office.

"Hm? What's wrong?" Shiraishi looked over in confusion—there was no "early pregnancy" in her health status!

"Cough, cough, it's nothing... Thinking about the questioning earlier makes me feel sick." Remembering what she had said while coaxing that shut-in clerk, Fuji felt another wave of nausea.

Fuji then explained, "Sure enough, that jackal lawyer had suggested it to him... That idiot clerk thought this case was getting a lot of attention, and many people would attend the hearing... His estranged wife and daughter had also been invited by that lawyer, so the witness had a hero complex!

"Under those circumstances, he would tend to treat uncertain memories as definite, and he would lean toward giving testimony the public was more willing to hear."

After pausing, Fuji added, "But... I don't think his testimony was entirely fabricated."

Although that last sentence was merely Fuji's subjective judgment, Shiraishi still nodded.

Given Komikado's personality, he would not dare find someone to fabricate testimony entirely.

What the witness remembered had not changed. At first, the police told him, "If you aren't sure, don't say it." Now, Komikado had used public opinion to make him "say it as though he were sure."

"That's not all you found, is it?" Shiraishi looked at Akasaka again, as well as the laptop in his arms.

"That's right... There's also this! But it doesn't quite match our direction of investigation, so..." Akasaka looked somewhat awkward.

It seemed they had instead uncovered evidence unfavorable to Tsubokura!

"That's fine. Let me see..." After opening the laptop, Shiraishi found that the screen displayed someone's blog.

"This is..." Shiraishi did not immediately understand why.

"Gen and Yamada found this blog post while searching for eyewitnesses who could verify the alibi. Chief, look here... The post says that on September 3, this blogger was at that plaza in Beika Park, and... she bought this!" Akasaka gestured for the chief to scroll down.

Yamada quite liked surfing the internet, so he had thought to search for accounts that had posted blog content near the scene around the time of the crime. Unexpectedly, they really did find something.

Sure enough, the photo below showed a cup of "Signature Iced Latte"—coffee from that very coffee truck. It matched the type Tsubokura had previously claimed to have bought, and it also matched the sole record retrieved from the cash register!

If this blogger had really ordered a "Signature Iced Latte" there on the afternoon of September 3, then Tsubokura's alibi was false—because the coffee truck had sold only one cup of coffee at that time.

Moreover, the blogger was clearly a woman who liked sharing her life. There was no way that little pale hand in the photo belonged to Tsubokura...

"Have you identified the blogger?" Shiraishi immediately asked.

"Yes, her identity information was in her earlier posts, but..." Akasaka said helplessly, "when we went to find her, she said... the Prosecutor's Office had already asked her to testify in court, and told her to refuse questioning if she encountered police officers."

Without an Arrest Warrant, she could indeed refuse to cooperate. Besides, she was not a suspect, so Emergency Arrest did not apply either. And... it was the prosecution that had told her she did not need to cooperate, so intimidating her would not work!

"Eh?" Aoki looked at the blog a few more times, then exchanged a glance with the chief.

Both of them realized that the witness Miki had found and handed over to the prosecution was apparently this Blogger Lady!

"If this blog post is genuine, then Tsubokura's alibi can be confirmed as invalid." Fuji looked puzzled as well—combined with what she had confirmed from the coffee clerk earlier, she kept feeling that something was off.

"Let me take a look..." Shiraishi suddenly said. As he spoke, he began scrolling through the Blogger Lady's posts.