Murder Seems to Require Reporting

"This calculator looks relatively clean. There isn't any dust built up in the gaps. There is some on the casing, but it was probably picked up recently—there'd be no reason for the kidnappers to hide something like this. It may be a signal left behind by the kidnapped sniper."

Conan nodded and pointed to the ground nearby. "There are scrape marks here too. The hostage probably pretended to fall, then slipped the calculator into the crack between the bricks while taking advantage of the chaos."

Jiang Xia, fully aware of what it meant to be a good Detective, raised his phone and snapped a few pictures of the area as evidence.

They had still contaminated the scene, of course, but as long as they were better than other detectives...

Jiang Xia put away his phone and, as though something had just occurred to him, asked Conan, who had seen what happened on the roof, "What did the kidnapped person look like?"

Conan thought for a moment. "He was backlit, so I couldn't see his face clearly... He looked around twenty or thirty, still fairly young. Spiky hair, tall and broad."

"I see..." Jiang Xia copied his thoughtful pose. "Come with me and find the police first. We can ask them about it—this may be connected to the missing-person case I ran into earlier."

"...A missing-person case?"

There were not many useful clues at the Abandoned Building for the time being.

The two fake children followed Jiang Xia back into the city and arrived at Masuo Eri's home.

—The police were still gathering traces throughout the house, trying to find the missing people.

"...That's what happened."

Jiang Xia repeated what he had just heard from the children to Sato Miwako:

"Since she disappeared while preparing for their honeymoon, and nobody