Officer Qing Yi gestured for Officer Seth to begin the preliminary site investigation, while she herself knelt down to carefully examine the mayor's body.
Sonoko, standing nearby, eagerly shared her opinion.
"Officer Qing Yi, the mayor definitely committed suicide! We saw it clearly on the live surveillance feed from outside, he was hanging from the beam and then fell down!"
Administrator also nodded in agreement repeatedly. "Yes, yes, we all saw it!"
Officer Seth was overjoyed, not expecting there to be surveillance here, and quickly asked. "Does this surveillance have a recording function? Can we retrieve previous footage to watch?"
Administrator looked troubled and shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Officer, this camera only has a live streaming function. The hard drive for storing recordings broke a long time ago, and there hasn't been any funding to replace it, so there are no recordings..."
Just then, Conan, who was squatting beside Officer Qing Yi watching her examine the body, habitually prompted
"Arere~ that's strange ~ Officer Qing Yi, look at the color of Mayor's back, it seems a little different from the surrounding skin, doesn't it?
Those purplish-red patches, are those the lividity Uncle Mori told me about? I remember Uncle Mori said that after a person dies, blood flows downwards,
and wherever is facing downwards, that's where lividity will form!"
"Child, you're right."
Officer Qing Yi patted Conan's head,
"This means that after the deceased died, for a long period, he was in a supine position, with his back facing down, for the lividity to form on his back.
If he had hanged himself, lividity would generally form on his legs. If the deceased had only recently died, lividity wouldn't form so quickly.
This means that the deceased's true time of death was at least several hours ago!"
"Wh-what?!" Sonoko was stunned.
Imaizumi Shigeo immediately raised an objection.
"That's impossible! We just saw the mayor hanging up there on surveillance about half an hour ago!
And at that time, we even saw the mayor swaying! There's no wind in here, if it was a corpse, how could it move on its own?!"
Officer Qing Yi chuckled, stroked her chin, and revealed an expression of having seen through the truth.
"Then there's only one possibility, the swaying body you saw on surveillance earlier was not the real body at all! It was the killer's disguise!
He put on the mayor's clothes, wore the Tengu mask, and hung himself from the beam, swaying, deliberately creating the illusion that the mayor had just hanged himself.
Once you all were drawn in, he then took the opportunity to slip away and place the real body here, disguised as having fallen."
This bold deduction made everyone gasp.
After Officer Qing Yi and Officer Seth's simple on-site questioning and review, as well as Zhu Yuan and other officers' investigations outside,
it was discovered that there were a total of three people who had significant conflicts with Mayor Masamune Shinya recently, and coincidentally, all of them were at the scene.
It was a classic 'choose one of three' case.
The suspects were.
Imaizumi Shigeo, a construction company manager, who had financial disputes with the mayor and was owed a large sum for engineering projects.
Administrator, who was repeatedly severely reprimanded by the mayor for always slacking off at work, and was even threatened with dismissal.
Shimomura Shozo, a retired principal and researcher of Tengu culture, who had a fierce argument with the mayor over his plan to convert Tengu Cave into a landfill.
All three looked nervous and denied being the killer.
At the same time, Conan, like a nimble monkey, climbed the uneven rock face around the shrine to the small platform where the shrine was located.
He searched carefully and quickly found and retrieved some fabric fragments consistent with the mayor's jacket material on several sharp rock edges.
Sonoko listened to the three people's defenses, found them quite reasonable, and advised Officer Qing Yi.
"Officer Qing Yi, do you think this could be a premeditated suicide?
Perhaps the mayor caused the lividity himself first, then climbed up to commit suicide, just to create a supernatural event and scare the person who was blackmailing him?"
No sooner had she finished speaking than a small anesthetic dart accurately hit the back of her neck.
"Ugh..."
Sonoko felt a strong wave of drowsiness wash over her, her body swayed, and she softly fell backward, conveniently propped up by a protruding rock nearby, creating a posture that looked like she was sitting in deep thought.
This time, Conan didn't even bother to find a hidden spot. He stood directly beside Sonoko, with his back to everyone, and used his bow-tie voice changer to adjust to Sonoko's voice, beginning his deduction.
"Ahem... I was just joking about the suicide earlier~"
Everyone looked at Sonoko, who was sitting behind the rock, her head bowed, but her voice came through clearly.
"Officer Qing Yi's deduction is completely correct. The killer disguised himself as the deceased. The course of events is as follows:"
"Around 11:50 AM today, Mayor Masamune arrived alone at Tengu Cave as per a phone appointment, preparing to meet the mysterious blackmailer.
At that time, Administrator was not here because he had slipped away early for lunch. The mayor himself opened the iron gate with a key placed under a rock and entered the depths of the cave."
"The killer, who had already ambushed him, took him by surprise and strangled the mayor from behind with a rope. This process happened inside the cave, unknown to anyone outside."
"After killing him, the killer took off the mayor's jacket and put it on himself, and wore a Tengu mask stolen from the souvenir shop.
Then, relying on his familiarity with the terrain, he climbed the rock face bare-handed and reached the beam of the shrine."
"Next, the killer performed a crucial step, he already knew that this beam, due to its age, had an internally decayed spot. He tied a rope to the beam, then used his strength to step on that weak point, causing it to break.
At the same time, like tying a safety rope, he connected himself to the beam with a rope, and from the perspective of the surveillance camera, it looked like a person was hanging there, struggling as if committing suicide!"
"When he learned that our group was attracted and began to enter the cave, he knew the time was right.
He immediately untied the rope, jumped behind the rock face out of the camera's view, quickly took off the mayor's jacket and mask, put them back on the real body,
and dragged the body to the bottom of the shrine, disguising it as having fallen from the beam. He himself then mingled with the crowd who later entered the cave, pretending to have been attracted by the commotion."
Conan's entire deduction process left everyone dumbfounded.
Imaizumi Shigeo frowned and questioned. "But how did the killer accurately gauge the time we would enter? He couldn't see what was happening outside."
"Good question!"
Conan immediately replied in Sonoko's voice,
"This involves another key point, which is the so-called 'Tengu's cry'! Shimomura-san, as a Tengu expert, do you really think that was a Tengu's cry?"
Shimomura Shozo pushed up his glasses. "What else could it be?"