The Victim's Identity

Although his hotel has indeed made a lot of money from those who come to commit suicide in recent years, he has never said a word in support of anyone's suicide, let alone openly support such things.

If this gets out now, who knows what trouble it might cause his hotel.

At this moment, Toda Yoshiro was only thinking that the two most famous detectives in Tokyo were now at his hotel. He hoped they could find out the real cause of death of this fake Kogoro Mouri as soon as possible. It would be best if it was suicide, so that the impact on the suicide forest next to the hotel wouldn't be too great. It would be best if it wasn't murder, otherwise the room where someone had died would probably be unable to be rented out for a long time.

Meanwhile, the hotel employee, Urakawa Eiji, was just an ordinary employee who only cared about his salary and had no idea about the future of the hotel.

Therefore, he could only offer his hindsight opinion from the sidelines.

"I see. I felt that Mr. Mori looked familiar when I first saw him, but I didn't immediately connect it to this."

"But why would the deceased impersonate Mr. Mori?"

As he asked this question, another employee Jimbo Masao, echoed him with the same question.

Immediately afterwards, almost everyone's eyes were drawn to a table in the room.

Everything in the room was in normal condition, indicating that the deceased hadn't made any significant disturbances during their lifetime.

On the table was a black briefcase with a key inserted in it, as if someone had deliberately created this scene so that others wouldn't miss it.

After dispersing all the other people unrelated to the case and having Altair keep an eye on the movements of the other people in the hotel from above, Jiang Hang entered the room and waited for Kogoro Mouri to open the briefcase.

The contents of this briefcase should be the key to this case.

What could possibly be so compelling that the murderer would risk exposing himself by leaving this item at the scene?

Jiang Hang looked at the hotel staff and owner. Only a few people knew that Kogoro Mouri would be coming. Among these people, the hotel staff were naturally the most suspicious.

Letting them stay at the scene was a decision tacitly agreed upon by Jiang Hang and Conan, so that they could better observe the expressions and reactions on these people's faces later.

As Misao Yamamura, wearing gloves, carefully opened the briefcase, a yellowed newspaper appeared before their eyes.

"Sports Daily?"

Kogoro Mouri glanced at it from the side, looking somewhat puzzled.

Toda Yoshiro added, "It was a report from a sumo match five years ago. It was the match in which the famous sumo wrestler Akagimaru, who had retired due to injury four years ago, won his first heavyweight match after more than ten years without a title."

He had secretly investigated the newspaper before, so he now knew its contents by heart.

"Akagimaru ...I seem to have a vague recollection of him," Kogoro Mouri, "Sumo has quite a following in Japan, so I've naturally heard of it." He took a closer look at the newspaper. "So, besides reporting Akagimaru's victory, this newspaper also recorded all the match records for that game?"

"Could the person who asked you to store their briefcase be a die-hard Akagimaru fan, and therefore want to keep this newspaper, a symbol of glory, forever?"

Kogoro Mouri made this deduction, but it is clear that such reasoning is completely untenable.

As he was flipping through the newspaper, some black lines suddenly fell through the gaps between the pages.

Misao Yamamura curiously reached out to borrow it, and then his scalp tingled – all those black lines were women's hair!

Thinking about the remains of the long-haired man he was currently investigating, he couldn't help but shudder.

Before he could even scream, Ran Mori screamed in fear again, and even hugged Conan next to her as a talisman, making Conan blush.

Compared to the murderer, Ran Mori has always been more afraid of these supernatural rumors.

If Ran Mori's 10 points of skill is enough to handle most murderers and criminals when facing corpses, then when facing these filthy things, Ran Mori fighting ability is probably reduced to only 10% or 20%.

Kogoro Mouri, however, was a bit slow on the uptake. "It's just some hair, there's no need to make such a fuss."

There was even a hint of resentment in Kogoro Mouri's tone.

After all, after seeing this newspaper, his mind was bursting with all sorts of ingenious and imaginative reasoning ideas.

He was already preparing to showcase his "deductive reasoning" to everyone at the hotel and Jiang Hang, but his daughter's interruption made it difficult for him to continue.

Before he could even begin his reasoning, Jiang Hang, standing beside him, accurately pointed out the origin of these seemingly intimidating hairs.

"The hair looked a little damp, but given the recent weather, that was obviously not due to moisture. And based on my observation, the hair came from a mixed source, at least four or five women."

Hair may seem to look the same at first glance.

However, different people have different hair colors, hair textures, and even the degree of hair care.

With Eagle Eye's ability, Jiang Hang could clearly distinguish the similarities and differences between these hairs.

Jiang Hang then approached and observed the hair closely. Relying on his five senses, which were also far beyond those of ordinary people, he could still faintly smell some shampoo on the hair.

Clearly, these hairs haven't been out for very long; they were probably collected just today.

Following Jiang Hang's explanation, Conan, who was being held by Ran, also chimed in, "Speaking of which, Ran- neechan, after we arrived at the hotel, you wanted to take a shower to relax, right? But you didn't end up doing so, did you?"

Ran paused for a moment, then nodded somewhat embarrassedly and said in a low voice, "At that time, there was a sign on the door of the women's bathroom that said 'Under Cleaning,' so I waited for more than an hour before I could go in."

However, upon hearing Ran's words, Toda Yoshiro paused for a moment before quickly explaining, "In order not to affect the guests' experience, our hotel usually waits until the early hours of the morning to clean the bathrooms, unless there is an accident in the bathroom and we temporarily take a break."

"But I remember there were no problems with the bathroom at noon today, right?"

Hearing the hotel owner's attempt to shift blame, Jiang Hang clapped his hands and made a deduction. "So it's quite simple. Someone deliberately collected the women's hair in the bathroom at noon today and put it in the newspaper in this briefcase."

"Although we don't know the person's intentions yet, it seems that the only person who could do this is probably one of your hotel's employees."

"In other words, Mr. Tota, one of your hotel employees has become involved in this case."

Chapter 465: Chapter 461: The Identity of the Deceased

After hearing Jiang Hang's reasoning, the expressions of the hotel staff present were somewhat unpleasant.

After all, in their hearts, they were just ordinary working people, but now they have suddenly become suspected murderers in a murder case. This change is naturally difficult for them to accept.

Faced with two famous detectives and another policeman, they dared not protest and could only obediently accept Jiang Hang's sharp gaze.

Jiang Hang's attention was mainly focused on the corpse that resembled Kogoro Mouri.

Judging from the marks on the body, the time of death was relatively early; the person was probably murdered shortly after they arrived at the hotel.

As for the cause of death, according to Jiang Hang's judgment, the deceased should have died of suffocation.

The murder weapon is the rope that left the deceased hanging from the beam in the room.

It's clear that the murderer wanted to make it look like a suicide to mislead the police, but there are significant differences between suffocation and asphyxiation.

Generally speaking, the cause of death for people who choose to hang themselves is not just suffocation.

Death can result from a rope compressing the trachea, causing suffocation; compressing blood vessels in the neck, causing cerebral ischemia; compressing nerves in the neck, causing cardiac arrest; or the cervical spine breaking due to gravity.

These events all occurred simultaneously.

Although the body's cervical spine showed signs of fracture from being compressed by the rope, it was not as obvious as that of a person who committed suicide by hanging.

At the same time, the rope left more than one mark on the other person's neck.

"It appears that the murderer strangled the victim from behind with a rope, suffocating him and preventing him from making any cries for help, until he was strangled to death before hanging the body on the beam."

Jiang Hang pointed to the ligature mark on the lower part of the deceased's neck and made a judgment. "In other words, this is indeed a murder, and a premeditated one at that."

"And the person who killed this victim is most likely the same murderer who killed the person who left this briefcase at the hotel five years ago."

With this in mind, Jiang Hang continued to examine the deceased's belongings.

And after this investigation, he actually found a cell phone in the pocket inside the deceased's coat.

"The deceased's cell phone. Maybe we can find out the deceased's true identity," Misao Yamamura with some surprise as he took the phone from Jiang Hang.

Jiang Hang nodded slightly. "The murderer didn't search the victim's body, but even left the victim's cell phone. Either the murderer was careless, or the murderer didn't have enough time to commit the crime. He simply didn't have time to check the items on the victim's body and could only hastily hang the victim's body on the beam before leaving the room."

As Jiang Hang said this, his gaze lingered between the hotel staff.

He had just inquired about the afternoon's work situation of these employees, but each of them had rather complicated jobs.

Cleaning the rooms that have been turned down, handling check-in procedures, parking for guests, delivering meals and buying things for guests... the employees of these rural inns basically do multiple jobs at the same time, and have to do a little bit of everything.

After the final round of questioning, almost none of them could perfectly prove everything they had done that afternoon, and their testimonies could be found to contain about half an hour of suspicious time.

In less than half an hour, the murderer could very well have used the time to kill the victim and then disguise the scene as it is now.

Similarly, none of these people mentioned the "cleaning in progress" sign hanging outside the women's bathroom, as if they weren't responsible for it.

Although judging from their expressions, Jiang Hang could use his Eagle Eye observation skills to discern who was more suspicious, he currently lacked substantial evidence, and little evidence was left at the scene—the suspect's hair was not considered evidence.

After all, the murderer was an employee of this hotel, and it's perfectly normal for him to leave a few hairs in the room when cleaning.

Similarly, the fingerprints and footprints left by the murderer are completely useless, as they can be said to have been left behind before. However, they might be useful in a crucial moment to bluff the murderer. If the other party panics and confesses without being asked, then the case can be solved smoothly.

Under such circumstances, Jiang Hang naturally did not reveal his judgment in advance.

The best-case scenario is that some useful information can be found on the deceased's undiscovered phone.

Unfortunately, the deceased had set a lock screen password on his phone, Misao Yamamura didn't dare to try again after trying twice without success.

"Damn it, why do people lock their phones these days? Now we can only wait for the technicians to come and help." Misao Yamamura said with a headache. This case seemed to be as baffling as ever.

First, let's discuss why this person is impersonating Kogoro Mouri and who his real identity is.

Next, we need to understand what that five-year-old newspaper in the briefcase really meant.

Finally, the question remains: who killed this person?

None of these problems have been resolved, and the case appears to have reached a stalemate.

In Misao Yamamura's eyes, even Kogoro Mouri was now deep in thought, having barely uttered a single useful word since the case began. It seemed this case was indeed quite troublesome.

However, before Misao Yamamura could worry about it for long, Jiang Hang took the phone back from him.

"In that case, leave it to me. I've recently learned a lot about hacking, so unlocking a phone shouldn't be a problem."

Upon hearing Jiang Hang's words, Misao Yamamura immediately perked up.

This Eagle-Eyed Detective I'm meeting for the first time seems incredibly talented.

He once again acted as a forensic pathologist, conducting an autopsy, and then directly took over the interrogation phase from the police officer. Moreover, his questioning skills seemed quite good; at least Misao Yamamura himself felt that he didn't have the same tough attitude as Jiang Hang when he questioned him.

Now, Jiang Hang has suddenly revealed his cracking skills.

Are detectives these days all so shrewd?

Misao Yamamura felt the same sentiment as those who had recently come into contact with Jiang Hang.

Why does it seem like Kogoro Mouri is completely suppressed by Jiang Hang now?

Such a thought subconsciously popped into Misao Yamamura's mind, but he quickly dismissed it.

No, no, since everyone outside says that Kogoro Mouri and Jiang Hang are twin stars, then Kogoro Mouri must also have his own strengths. It's just that he hasn't encountered a place where he can show Kogoro Mouri abilities yet.

With this in mind, Misao Yamamura had already quietly sided with Jiang Hang.

Call and ask Koharu Yoshino to bring the notebook over.

After connecting the data cable, Jiang Hang unlocked the screen in no time, and even jokingly asked Misao Yamamura, "The police shouldn't hold me responsible for this, right?"

Misao Yamamura quickly explained, "Don't worry, Mr. Jiang Hang. As an advisor to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, these are all to assist in the investigation, and you certainly won't be punished."

As he said this, he opened his phone to check.

"There's only one number in the contacts. Does this person never communicate with anyone, or is this phone not the one they usually use?" Misao Yamamura scratched his forehead.

"That seems to be the latter reason. Perhaps the deceased had two cell phones. He used one more often, which was found and taken by the murderer. He kept the other cell phone, which he used less, away and never took it out. I guess the murderer didn't think of this and was careless."

With one small mystery solved, Misao Yamamura was quite excited and immediately contacted the only number in the phone.

A short while later, a somewhat puzzled male voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Hey, is this Duff? Why did you suddenly call me? Did you manage to land that big deal you told me about last time?"

"Oh, right, your landlord contacted me before and said that if you don't pay your rent this month, he will ask you to move out. What's the situation on your end?"

Misao Yamamura hesitated for a moment, about to tell the person on the other end of the phone that he was a police officer and ask them to help him solve the case.

The person on the other end of the phone seemed to be busy as well. After talking to Misao Yamamura for a while, he suddenly said, "I have a customer here. I'll contact you later." Then he hung up.

Jiang Hang suspected that the owner of the phone might have sensed something was wrong, so he simply pretended to be dead and hung up.

However, this is not a problem for the police.

Since there's nothing wrong with the number, the police just need to verify the identity of the number's owner.

Moreover, the abruptly ended phone call wasn't entirely without effect.

At least they now know the deceased's name.

"Tatsuo Mori, Tatsuo is the name the other party called on the phone, and Sen is the Romanized name of the note the other party stuck on the back of the phone. After that, all we need to do is investigate whether the deceased had another phone number, and find out who that phone number contacted. That should allow us to find out the identities of those who spoke to the deceased on the phone before his death, right?"

In addition, it has been confirmed that the deceased was short of money.

Before his death, he couldn't even afford the rent, but he came here without hesitation because he seemed to have recently received some kind of big job.