manynovel Chapter 309 Arsonist
Chapter 309 Arsonist
Chapter 309 Arsonist
Sawai Manabu lit a cigarette he had bought from a convenience store. He then walked to the window of the private room, from which they could see the rented villa from which they had arrived.
Suddenly he froze, then shouted in terror, "Wait! Is our villa on fire?!"
Ran stood up abruptly, her kind nature almost blurting out, "How could that be? But right now, Mami-senpai is still inside the villa and hasn't come out yet!"
The car keys were still with Noguchi Shibahisa. Because they were going to drive, and some of them hadn't been drinking, they didn't care about speeding or anything, and just floored the gas pedal and sped toward the villa.
In the car, Ran clasped her hands together, praying with a worried expression for Uchida Asami, whose fate was unknown. Even without comparing it to Shinichi Kudo's choice, in some ways, Uchida Asami had already lost completely.
"Don't worry, everything will be alright."
Although they didn't know where Akutagawa Hiko's confidence came from, Sonoko, Ran, and Conan all breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing his confident tone.
"The starry sky tells me that there will be no casualties tonight."
Yarn —
Although Akutagawa Hiko had communicated with that astrologer, Toda Maria herself was only a novice; astrology was unpredictable.
Akutagawa Hiko felt that he didn't really have any talent in this area. He wasn't like that old toad from Mount Myōboku, who could still manage to play cards with the help of the protagonist's halo, but he was completely clueless when it came to stargazing.
Indeed, since ninjutsu originated from extraterrestrials, learning Earth's astrology is somewhat out of place.
Despite what Akutagawa Hiko said, Sonoko and the others were still anxious. Only heaven knows whether the star signified that they had rescued Uchida Asami in time, or that Uchida Asami had already escaped.
They had heard countless stories of the horrific consequences of blindly believing in prophecies and disbelieving them, and could only believe to a limited extent before giving it their all.
When everyone arrived at the scene, the fire was already raging. When Yoshiyuki Morimoto rushed forward to open the villa door with a key, a sudden fireball almost burned him.
"The fire is just too big!"
With such a terrifying fire, and Uchida Asami sleeping on the sofa, if she hadn't escaped while the fire was still small, she probably would have found only a corpse even if she had rushed in now.
Fortunately, a voice stopped everyone from using their own methods to save the person.
"You're back! I'm fine, don't worry!"
"Asami?!"
"Mami-senpai!"
Asami Uchida leaned against a large tree, still feeling a little dizzy, and forced a smile, saying, "Ah, I'm fine."
Remembering what the mysterious man had said, Uchida Asami paused to observe Sawai Manabu's expression, only to find him looking around furtively, not daring to glance at her, as if she were not the object of his confession a month ago, but something far more terrifying.
Seeing this, Uchida Asami's smile faded slightly.
Then, she remembered that it was after drinking the glass of water that Sawai Manabu handed her that she fell into a daze and fell asleep, until she woke up not long ago and witnessed the fire.
As the sirens grew closer, the fire department finally arrived and extinguished the fire that had engulfed the nearly burned wooden villa.
Meanwhile, Akutagawa Hiko and Conan, wearing safety helmets to protect themselves from being injured by collapsing roofs, also entered the fire scene to investigate the cause of the fire and clues about possible arsonists with the firefighters.
Thus, guided by Conan's keen sense of smell and the protagonist's halo, Akutagawa Hiko obtained clues such as [a candle burned down to a small piece], [a fax burned down to fragments that could not be pieced together], and [the placement of the furniture].
The arsonist couldn't possibly be Uchida Asami, who narrowly escaped death, so it could only be Sawai Manabu, who returned to the villa before leaving, saying he wanted to tidy up a bit.
"To be honest, it's a bit too obvious, but if Sawai Manabu wanted to murder Mami-senpai, why would he use such a dosage that would wake her up prematurely?"
Conan pieced together the two fax fragments and found that they didn't match at all. After noticing the chair in front of the fax machine and the cake crumbs on it, Conan roughly deduced the truth of the matter.
However, there was one thing he couldn't understand: Uchida Asami clearly still seemed to be under the effects of the drug, so how did she escape from the fire unharmed?
"Don't think about it too much, call the police, and contact the convenience store owner too—"
When Akutagawa Hiko called everyone to the open space and announced that the fire was not an accident but an arson attack deliberately planned by someone, everyone's face was filled with shock, and Sawai Manabu's face showed obvious panic.
"The flaws are too obvious. The furniture in the villa was deliberately arranged so that it would be easy to access a fire ignition point, namely the cake on the chair and around the fax machine —"
Sawai Manabu's plan was very simple. After everyone left, he quickly arranged the furniture and relit the candles, placing them below the fax machine's output slot.
In this way, if he uses the fax machine at the convenience store to transmit documents, he can ignite the paper with a candle, which will then set off the chairs covered with flammable materials for comfort, thus spreading the fire throughout the entire villa.
Although the candle's burning endurance made Akutagawa Hiko a little nervous, this is, after all, the world of Detective Conan, and many details don't stand up to scrutiny.
The unique laws governing the creation of matter are quite fascinating in the world of Detective Conan.
"If it were a crime of passion committed by someone other than us, we could have simply set a fire without using such an obvious method. So only one of us who couldn't be at the scene when the fire started would have needed to use such a clumsy method to start the fire."
Akutagawa Hiko adjusted his non-existent glasses: "Combining the convenience store owner's testimony and the surveillance footage, there's only one truth!"
Everyone turned their attention to the direction Akutagawa Hiko was pointing, where Sawai Manabu stood in the crowd, his face filled with astonishment.
"How...how could this be?"
"Don't talk nonsense! You think you can say I am—what?!" based solely on such unfounded speculation.
Conan instantly slipped away from Sawai Manabu, who was trying to catch him, and ran to Akutagawa Hiko's side, sticking out his tongue and making a face at him.
"Oh my, it really is just like what Brother Ayan said, Uncle Sawai hid the copy on his person."
Akutagawa put on gloves and unfolded the sticky A4 paper covered in butter: "The convenience store owner even complained that you put sticky paper on his fax machine, and you did it backwards. He reminded you several times, but you didn't listen."
Sawai Manabu knelt down with a thud, his face full of astonishment. He never expected that the thing he hadn't discarded to avoid being discovered would become the most crucial piece of evidence.
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