Conan's corpse picker

Chapter 3894 3908 [Medical Team]

Under Hashimoto Maya's regretful gaze, the group carefully descended the steep stairs to the bottom.

At the end of the door was a large glass door. Mrs. Kusaka walked over and was about to open it when she suddenly saw what was inside through the glass and was horrified: "Husband!"

"What happened?" Jiang Xia walked to her side, looked into the window, and also showed a surprised expression.

—The room is filled with rows of display shelves that reach the ceiling, and the aisle between two shelves faces the door.

The passageway was covered in bright red. President Kusaka was lying on his back in a bizarre duck-like position, his upper body leaning against the cabinet, while his calves and thighs were bent and stacked together.

Several broken bottles of red wine lay scattered around him, the liquid spilled onto the dark floor, as red as blood.

"Ah!" Ran Mouri screamed in fright, but after a couple of screams, she felt something was wrong. Upon closer inspection, she hesitated, "Why is this blood so bright red... Wait, this isn't blood? President Kusaka didn't bleed?"

“It certainly doesn’t look like a pool of blood,” Jiang Xia said, turning the doorknob as he did so, only to find the door locked from the inside.

Startled by the noise, Mrs. Rixia rummaged through her pockets, pulled out a key, and handed it to Jiang Xia: "This, this is the key to this wine cellar!"

Jiang Xia took it, inserted it into the keyhole, turned it twice, and clicked open the door. He pushed the door open, stepped over the smudged red wine, looked down at President Kusaka, shook his head and sighed, "There's no heartbeat anymore."

This sentence is a euphemism for saying that the person is dead.

Mrs. Hikaru understood, gasped, and fainted without uttering a sound.

Hashimoto Maya instinctively wanted to dodge, but then she suddenly remembered that she was mingling with upright people like Jiang Xia under the identity of "assistant at a detective agency," so she took another half step and reached out to catch the unconscious person, calling out with concern, "Mrs. Kusaka!"

Upon seeing that the man was still alive, Sonoko Suzuki immediately perked up: "Call an ambulance right away!"

After dialing and explaining the situation, Ran Mouri, who was standing next to her, had already called the police. Sonoko Suzuki was very pleased with her best friend's understanding, but then she glanced at Maya Hashimoto and remembered something: "Don't you have a medical clinic or a medical team or anything on your island?"

Hashimoto Maya: "..." What a joke! What if we manage to save someone with something like this... Ha, as expected of a competitor, your mind is truly cunning.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at Jiang Xia beside him. In front of such a righteous detective, Hashimoto Maya certainly couldn't say that he hadn't considered the medical team.

He then casually said, "Actually, I signed a team before, but unfortunately their attending physician had something come up and couldn't come over for a while, so there are no doctors on the island for the time being—don't worry, I will find a suitable doctor to fill the gap."

"Also, we do have basic first-aid kits here."

After all, first aid kits contain gauze, scissors, pliers, and even syringes. Who knows, some clever murderer might have a flash of inspiration and use them as props.

However, speaking of this, Hashimoto Maya suddenly remembered something and exclaimed in her heart, "That's right, doctors! I was just worried about not having a proper reason to invite people to the island. Now I can use this as a pretext to find some doctors with bad interpersonal relationships or those who have had medical accidents in the past."

"Of course, we can't sign long-term contracts. If we get involved in some lucky case, it'll be troublesome. We'll sign them for a week or two each time. The doctors will probably be more willing to come. After all, this is an island. Doctors aren't afraid of murders or corpses. Who wouldn't like a paid vacation?"

……

A diligent island manager has already begun to think about how to attract customers.

Meanwhile, Conan, oblivious to his unusual behavior, was staring at the corpse on the ground, utterly bewildered: "How did he die in this position? This is too strange. Even if the space between the two wine racks is narrow, normally, if he were kneeling, shouldn't he be lying forward? How did he suddenly end up sitting like a duck, and knock over so many bottles of red wine?"

Conan paced back and forth in the wine cellar, but couldn't come up with any conclusion.

After a while, a ship broke through the waves and docked on the island. Inspector Megure, sporting dark circles under his eyes, led a few subordinates and wearily ashore.

"I heard the filming for the show on the island has finished. I thought I wouldn't have to take the boat for a while." He took a deep drag on his cigarette and exhaled with a weary expression. "What happened this time?"

Jiang Xia also sighed: "One of the club presidents has died."

……

Despite their apparent apathy, the police's work efficiency was anything but low, even bordering on mechanized.

Not long after, a document was delivered to Jiang Xia.

Officer Takagi reported smoothly, "The deceased was Kusaka Shohei, 52 years old, who currently runs a financial company in Tokyo. The cause of death..." Officer Takagi paused, glancing at the deceased's strange posture, and said with some doubt:

“He was actually strangled to death—the scene was so chaotic, when I first arrived I thought someone had smashed a bottle over the back of his head.”

As Officer Takagi spoke, he took out another set of keys from the evidence bag: "These were found on the deceased. The middle one is the key to this wine cellar—the door to this wine cellar locks automatically, and the only people with the key are President Kusaka and his wife. Also…"

“I didn’t.” Hashimoto Maya noticed his gaze turn to her and immediately interrupted, “This is a wine cellar rented by President Kusaka. It’s full of his precious collection, so he chose the door himself. He didn’t give me the key after it was installed.”

The forensic officers had been examining the lock for a while when they heard this, and nodded: "There are no strange marks in the keyhole, so it shouldn't have been dug up."

Officer Takagi made a note of it, feeling a little awkward: "So there are only two keys that can open this door."

...Why didn't we make a total of three? He didn't know why, but he always felt that in a case, everything had to be in groups of three to be considered normal.

Hashimoto Maya felt a chill run down her spine as she suspiciously sized up the seemingly honest police officer.

Beside him, Jiang Xia looked at the police officer who was busy at the top window and asked, "How is it at the window? Are there any signs of someone breaking in?"

The forensic officers shook their heads regretfully: "No fingerprints were found, and there were no footprints or other marks on the cabinet under the window. The murderer probably didn't come from this side. Also, this window only has a handle on the inside, so it can't be opened or closed from the outside."

He then pointed to the bottom edge of the window: "Also, there's an alarm sticking out here. If you pry the window open with brute force instead of turning the handle normally, the alarm will be triggered."