Chapter 443 - 54: Shock

Chapter 443: Chapter 54: Shock

Fukase was currently the police’s number-one suspect, because one of the victims in the ongoing mahjong case had once been seriously wounded when Fukase stabbed him with a knife. The motive had been nothing more than the other man warning him not to smoke while they were waiting in line.

Of course, Fukase had paid a price for that too. He had been wanted for a year, and now the police had finally tracked him down, cornering him in a shopping center while he was meeting his girlfriend.

They already had victory in the bag, yet some short-haired female passerby, acting as though she were both blind and deaf, ignored the police warnings about the criminal, strolled past without a care, and got grabbed by Fukase as a hostage.

Conan zoomed in with the high-tech glasses Professor Agasa had invented. It was not hard to notice that no blood was seeping from the place where the knife had cut the woman’s face. Her ankle also bulged slightly, as though she had a gun hidden there.

Was the face a disguise?

Considering everything that had happened recently, Conan had good reason to suspect that this hostage was Vermouth, deliberately offering herself up to Fukase.

When he saw Fukase retreating step by step with her, Conan no longer had time to worry about whether an Organization member hidden among the police might notice him. He used the Professor’s high-tech belt to make a soccer ball on the spot. From a distance that was practically the limit of a handgun’s effective range, he kicked it with his power-enhancing shoes and nailed Fukase squarely in the face.

That should have ended everything. Instead, the girlfriend Fukase had come to meet chose that exact moment to demonstrate the power of true love. She picked up the knife and trembled with panic and fear. "You... get away from him..."

"Risa-san, this won’t solve anything. Put down the knife." Officer Yui tried to talk her down.

"Don’t force me... Let him go!" Risa lunged with the knife.

Inspector Megure hurried forward and tried to shield the other person from the blade. Conan, farther away, saw the beggar who had been occupying his thoughts lately—or rather, the knight—walk over and slap Risa to the ground without the slightest trace of chivalrous pity.

Where did this guy come charging out from?

Conan narrowed his eyes. Even now, he somehow had enough attention to spare to look the man over again and realized that this time, the "knight" did not seem to be carrying the cat that least fit his image.

The other officers reacted quickly as well and pinned Risa to the ground.

After doing that, the knight turned and left, as though it had merely been something he did in passing.

"You there, young man, hold on a moment." Inspector Megure waved at Famine’s back, but failed to make him stay, leaving the other officers blank for a moment as well.

The guy just saved you, and the first thing you do is call him "young man"?

Inspector Megure more or less counted as someone Yimi knew. The day she fake-cried, she had even received a lollipop from him, so naturally she was not going to stand by and watch him get stabbed.

This was the downside of having too many abilities. Yimi had subconsciously used a Stand again, since it did not require her to readjust her Adaptive Power. If she had used psychokinesis instead, she would not even have needed to think about making the Stand retreat afterward.

Because of the angle, Conan never noticed Yimi at all. He watched the Stand’s back for a moment, then hurriedly shifted his attention to the more important Vermouth.

"Vermouth."

Conan finally cornered her in a parking garage. This was the first time the two had met face-to-face.

It was extremely reckless, but he had no time to call for backup. There was still a mole among the police, and more importantly, he was intensely curious why Vermouth had not reported his information to the Organization. If she had, someone should already have been sent to execute him.

"Heh." Vermouth peeled off her mask and deliberately played dumb. "How strange. Do we know each other, little boy?"

Conan did not follow her into an irrelevant conversation. He silently adjusted his watch to machine-gun mode. "You let him take you hostage on purpose, didn’t you? So that man is your accomplice?"

"NOC."

Vermouth gave Conan a piece of spy jargon, then surprisingly explained without hesitation. "One of the victims in this case was one of ours. Apparently for security reasons, he carried a flash drive containing information on the Organization’s undercover agents."

She took out a slim women’s cigarette and lit it. "The Organization had already been planning to eliminate him in the near future, but someone beat us to it. The killer who took him out also stole the flash drive."

Conan lowered his head so the light reflected off his lenses. "So your people infiltrated the police because you were afraid the police would identify the killer before you did and get that flash drive first, right?"

"You’ve already figured out that much? Impressive as always, Kudo Shinichi." Vermouth praised him once, then continued, "Irish. That’s his codename. The reason I’m telling you this much is simple. I was ordered to help him with his disguise, but our relationship is hardly good. That’s all I can tell you, though."

If one wanted to ask why, the blame went to that damned white-haired brat. She had shot Vermouth with an anesthetic needle and forced her to give up Pisco, while Irish had always greatly admired Pisco...

Vermouth’s pupils suddenly contracted. She stared behind Conan with an expression of pure fright, as though she had seen a ghost. Even though a master of disguise like her concealed it almost immediately, Conan still caught that fleeting reaction.

Puzzled, he turned his face just enough to glance behind him while keeping Vermouth in the edge of his vision. There stood the noiseless Yimi, both hands already stretched close to his ears, looking as though she were just about to cover his eyes.

"How did you—"

Vroom—

"Goodbye, great detective." Vermouth seized the opening, yanked open the car door, and roared out of the garage. It felt wonderful to be holding a steering wheel again.

She got away.

Conan groaned in frustration, then turned back toward Yimi, whose prank had failed and who was now hiding both hands behind her back. "Why are you here?"

"You can be here, so why can’t I, be here?" Yimi replied unhappily. She was already in a bad mood.

Her goodbye with Queen had not gone smoothly. She had nearly been pulled across Eri’s lap and spanked. Fortunately, Yimi had changed back into a cat and slipped out of her grasp.

Perhaps it was because this was the first time Eri had seen Yimi turn into a cat. Or perhaps it was because the cat transformed from such a tiny girl looked unexpectedly round. Either way, Eri had frozen long enough to watch Yimi run away right in front of her.

Completely unable to understand what had gone wrong with their communication, Yimi decided she would wait for Eri to calm down and then go back to say goodbye again.

Seeing her reaction, Conan swallowed the words that had reached his throat. Yimi obviously could not know anything about this investigation. From her perspective, she had probably only been taking an ordinary trip to the supermarket. Still, this coincidence was ridiculous.

Conan looked in the direction Vermouth had driven away. He had clearly seen the abnormal change in her expression just now.

Since this was their first meeting, he could not be sure what sort of person Vermouth was. Maybe she had only been acting, deliberately trying to make him expose an opening? But there was no doubt that Yimi had been about to cover his eyes and play "Guess who?" If Vermouth had simply waited for Yimi to actually do it, would that not have made escaping even easier?

Conan stared at Yimi’s face. A few increasingly unrealistic ideas began to stir faintly in his mind, but he did not say them aloud.