After posing a few more questions, Kiichi Higashino was nearly certain that Toshihiko Takasugi was up to no good. The man's intentions reeked of ulterior motives, though Kiichi couldn't quite pin down the specifics of his revenge scheme.
If this were a different setting, would standing someone up really count as revenge? In Beika Town, probably not. The locals had seen far worse.
Either way, Kiichi had done his part, gathering the information he'd been asked to dig up. What happened next was a private matter for the parties involved—unless, of course, Takasugi went so far as to murder his wife or father-in-law. Until then, it was none of Kiichi's business.
He didn't relish the idea of a joyous occasion turning into a tragedy, but meddling too much wasn't his style. Still, he felt a pang of guilt for Miss Takeuchi, the close friend of Sayuri Matsumoto. Confidentiality, after all, was a fragile thing. "I'm only telling you, don't spread it around," was practically an invitation for the whole town to know by sundown.
What unfolded afterward was beyond Kiichi's knowledge. He only heard that the Matsumoto household erupted into chaos, though the wedding proceeded as planned. For days after, Inspector Matsumoto, already known for his perpetually grim expression, looked even more dour.
It wasn't until the wedding day that Kiichi learned Sayuri Matsumoto had once been the junior high music teacher of a certain pint-sized harbinger of death. To make matters worse, Rachel Moore and Sonoko Suzuki showed up to the ceremony with said harbinger in tow—Conan Edogawa.
It was a miracle no one died.
Conan should be banned from all celebratory events, period.
In any case, the matter passed without further incident. For reasons unknown, the "grim reaper" seemed to enter a quiet phase post-wedding, leaving no fresh cases in his wake. This gave Kiichi a rare moment to catch his breath and review the trail of chaos Conan had left behind during Kiichi's brief stint back in Yokohama.
That's when he stumbled upon something truly horrifying.
The Conan-verse timeline.
He'd braced himself for it, but when the reality of this warped temporal phenomenon hit, it sent chills down his spine. It wasn't the chaotic, nonsensical leaps people joked about in his previous life—Monday today, Saturday tomorrow, the 1st yesterday, the 28th today. No, this was far worse.
It was as if time and dates couldn't be observed simultaneously.
When you checked the date, it seemed normal. When you measured the passage of time, that too appeared ordinary. Take Kiichi's seven-day vacation, for instance. By all accounts, it was precisely seven days. But if you examined each individual day within that span, the calendar somehow stretched far beyond seven days. In those "seven days," nearly a month had passed.
Yet everyone knew it was only seven days.
It was like playing a game with a date-based mechanic while using a cheat to lock the calendar in place. Pure Conan-verse logic.
The initial terror of this discovery was indescribable, but once the shock wore off, Kiichi realized it wasn't all bad. At least this meant he wouldn't be buried under thousands of episodes' worth of murders in a matter of months, keeling over from exhaustion. Nor would he lose track of seasons due to erratic date jumps, looking like a lunatic in the process.
To his surprise, Kiichi found himself accepting this bizarre reality with ease. A few months might stretch into decades, yet no one aged. Aside from the bitter pill of never getting promoted, this was a win.
Immortality, essentially.
Maybe Conan should stay a kid forever. One small sacrifice for the happiness of the world, right?
Kiichi had braced himself for an overwhelming workload once Conan was back in action, but to his delight, the kid's return didn't bring the expected deluge of cases. The relief was palpable.
Until, inevitably, duty called.
Rachel Moore, Beika's premier "case magnet," rang him up. It was a holiday, but detectives didn't get those. Inspector Megure had been up late the previous night, dealing with a fiasco involving a bumbling gang playing Home Alone with a group of thieves in a supermarket. Now swamped with post-arrest paperwork, the man deserved a break—especially given his alarming blood pressure. Kiichi decided to show some respect for his senior and let the middle-aged inspector rest.
Sato and Takagi, the department's other workhorses, were buried in reports, and Kiichi saw no point in dragging them along. They'd be of little help anyway.
So, he drove to the crime scene: a high-rise in Beika Town.
Rachel was waiting at the entrance. "Inspector Higashino," she greeted, approaching him. "The crime scene's at the elevator on the eighth floor."
Kiichi nodded and followed her to the elevators. The building had three: the left one went straight to the top floor, the fifteenth; the middle served floors eight and above; and the right one covered the lower floors, one through eight. Standard setup for a high-rise.
Without a word, Kiichi boarded the right elevator with Rachel and rode to the eighth floor.
Stepping out, he was greeted by the usual suspects: Kogoro Mouri, Conan, a security guard, and a woman with a large bag slung over her shoulder. The victim lay sprawled at the elevator entrance, a single knife wound piercing her chest.
Kogoro launched into his customary recap. The gist: Rachel had been scouted by Eiko Toya, a top-tier domestic fashion designer—the woman with the bag—to model for her. The Mouri family had come along for the gig. The victim, Mika Taniguchi, was Toya's secretary, who had been set to resign after today, her final day on the job.
Before the incident, Toya had taken the left elevator to the fifteenth floor to handle paperwork and arrange flowers the Mouris had brought. Meanwhile, Taniguchi rode the middle elevator to the eighth floor to prepare accessories for a photoshoot. When Toya couldn't reach Taniguchi by phone, she asked everyone to check on her. That's when they found the body, slumped outward from the elevator, blocking the doors.
"How long did it take Miss Toya to go up and come back down?" Kiichi asked.
"Two minutes, maybe a bit over one," the security guard replied.
"Inspector," Kogoro interjected, opting for formality since he and Kiichi weren't particularly close, "I think this was a burglary gone wrong. The shoeprints on the floor lead to the staircase, and the emergency exit on the first floor was unlocked."
Under Kogoro's questioning, the guard confirmed he'd checked the emergency exit two hours before the incident, and it had been locked. The only person to enter or exit the building in the hour prior was Toya herself, the company's chairman.
"So, it's obvious," Kogoro declared, doubling down. "The culprit broke the emergency exit's lock, climbed the stairs to the eighth floor, and ran into Miss Taniguchi as she stepped out of the elevator, leading to this tragedy. After killing her, the murderer fled down the stairs and out the emergency exit. The shoeprints are proof!"
Kiichi stared at the shoeprints, suppressing a sigh. Kogoro's incompetence was no secret, but this was a new low. The man had been a detective once—a top graduate from the police academy, no less. Hard to believe.
The shoeprints were blatantly fake. The stride length was unnaturally consistent, as if the culprit had strolled away leisurely after committing murder. Who does that? Worse, the forensics team had already measured the prints: 26 centimeters, roughly a men's size 42. That suggested an adult male, likely over 1.7 meters tall. Yet the stride was far too short for someone of that height, even at a casual pace.
Clearly, a smaller person was trying to pass as a tall man.