The Phantom Thief of Heart! But Conan.

Following his words, everyone present turned their attention back to Makoto Yata.

Regarding this true anti-fan who chose such an extreme route of forming an alliance with Shinichi Kudo in order to get revenge on him, it's hard to know how to evaluate him properly for the time being.

You could say he admires Shinichi Kudo, but this guy doesn't trust Kudo's reasoning; you could say he hates Shinichi Kudo, but he actually seems to be quite the opposite...

Considering the pistol that Shinichi Kudo obtained, it's astonishing how much money and energy Makoto Yata has invested in his revenge; it's truly a complex situation for anyone to witness.

“I studied very hard.” Makoto Yata’s eyes twitched as he tried to argue, “There’s no point in belittling my efforts like this. Detective Akechi, this whole mess happened because Shinichi Kudo identified the problem first.”

His gaze remained fixed on Shinichi Kudo's face, the underlying resentment still impossible to conceal.

His emotions regarding the murder case a year ago and the deaths of his adoptive parents cannot be simply described as "harboring resentment."

Shinichi Kudo glanced at him sideways for a moment, sighed, and turned his gaze to the direction behind him.

Several hurried footsteps followed, and in the direction his gaze fell, Shiroyama Kazuma and another policeman followed with serious expressions.

“Regarding the case from a year ago, you seem to have many doubts about my conclusions. You can raise them now in front of the police.” Shinichi Kudo gestured in their direction and handed over his gun. “This is Inspector Shiroyama, who participated in the investigation a year ago, and the other is a detective who recently joined Higashiosu Village. With them here, what I’m saying now can be corroborated. If your doubts are valid, they will reopen the investigation. Is that enough?”

Clearly, Shiroyama Kazuma, who hadn't slept well and looked quite unwell, and another policeman happened to be at the top of the stairs when they suddenly heard this outburst of words, and were somewhat taken aback.

Kazuma Shiroyama could guess some of the situation, but the other police officer was unaware that a reinvestigation had taken place in the village that day. He was dragged by Shinichi Kudo to search the scene of the old murder case with a blank expression. He looked at Shinichi with a blank expression as he took out a handgun, and then he was dragged to the hotel with a blank expression.

His expression was initially quite displeased, but when he saw the people standing in a circle, after a moment of observation, his face immediately became solemn and respectful.

These are all familiar faces; do they even have the right to speak here...?

Faced with Shinichi Kudo's blunt retort, Makoto Yata's emotions clearly broke down, his eyes widened and his voice rose considerably.

"Then explain why you judged such an obvious robbery scene as a suicide. If it really was a suicide, how do you explain the footprints, the murder weapon, Aunt Nichihara's jewels, and the other stolen Buddha statues... You're not going to say that this was done by the god of death, are you?!"

Other villagers might be deceived by the legend, believing that some kind of Death God punished the village chief of Nihara. But no one knows the truth about the Death God better than Makoto Yata himself, the second-generation Death God.

They are patrollers who go back and forth between the woods and the village to protect the villagers and tourists. How could they possibly harm the village chief himself, who is also doing this for the good of the village?

If Takitoku Hibari hadn't died, Higashi-Oku Village might already be on a better path of development, just as he had planned. These foolish speculations would have no place to grow, and he would finally be free from his work of patrolling and protecting the forest day and night, keeping it a secret from everyone.

So how could that be? Who would hurt him?!

“As I’ve already said, Kudo’s judgment was correct.” Hoshikawa Teru shook his head. “The reason why the scene looked like a robbery, I guess, was probably done intentionally by the village chief of Nihara himself.”

Even ignoring any prior information, Hoshikawa Teru could reach the same conclusion based solely on the scene.

Based on the distribution pattern of the bloodstains, it is not difficult to see that in several rooms, such as the collection room, the scene of the typhoon passing through occurred after the bloodstains caused by the murder. In other words, the village chief of Nichihara first stabbed his wife to death, then started smashing things around the house, and finally stepped on those footprints at the back door.

“Agreed.” Hattori Heiji adjusted his baseball cap and analyzed seriously, “The reason he would act that day was partly because neither of the children, including you, were home. It’s hard to say that this wasn’t intentional. He chose to leave Hihara Daiki at a relative’s house overnight precisely for this attack. Arranging the scene as it is now will make it easier for you and Hihara Daiki to believe that the culprit in this case is someone else.”

"The missing items, such as the shoes that left footprints, the murder weapon, and Mrs. Hihara's jewelry and antique statues, I guess they might be in the lake. Kudo, am I right?" Koshimizu Nanatsuki stroked her chin and added some more information.

"...You guys, really." Not knowing whether this group was backing him up or secretly competing with him again, Shinichi Kudo chuckled, and finally looked at the police officer who had followed him, "Yes, these things are all in the lake, the one you can see from the terrace, the lake next to the forest."

"That's impossible!" Makoto Yata's voice rose sharply. "The house is at least 30 meters from the lake. How can you throw something in without leaving a trace at that distance?!"

“Besides the murder weapon and jewelry, there’s something else missing from the scene. Didn’t you see it today?” Hattori Heiji shook his head, leaned closer to him, and looked him up and down. “It’s the lanyards for those medals in the collection room. If you were a robber, faced with something like a medal, would you take the medal and melt it down, or steal the lanyard? What’s the point of taking the lanyard?”

“You grew up in that family too. Even if you don’t know about the sports that Village Chief Nihara participated in when he was young, didn’t you notice, like Daiki Nihara, that he really liked ring toss and was very accurate?” Nanatsuki Koshimizu turned her head. “When I looked at those medals before, I felt that the patterns were somewhat familiar. Village Chief Nihara must have participated in competitions with track and field events, such as triathlons.”

“A hammer.” Shinichi Kudo finally had a chance to speak. “The Niou statue, along with those jewels, all served as a counterweight. He put the Niou statue, the murder weapon, the shoes, and other evidence, along with a lot of gems, into a bag, tied a rope to it, and then threw it out like a hammer thrower, spinning around once. That’s why the footprints on the terrace had that shape.”

As he spoke, he turned his questioning gaze toward Goro Akechi, who was theoretically the most skilled in trace evidence examination and judgment.

Sensing the pressure in his eyes, Hoshikawa Teru took a deep breath and continued, "Yes, the footprints would look like that. It's not that the culprit was walking on the balcony and pushed the village chief off. The absence of the village chief's footprints isn't because he wasn't wearing shoes. It's because the village chief was wearing shoes with bloodstains that he had stepped on at the back door. He walked to the balcony, took off the shoes, put them in a bag, spun around, threw them out, and jumped off."

"This, how is this possible? Such a long distance, wind resistance, and, and..." It was obvious that Makoto Yata's voice trembled as he realized he hadn't expected such a solution.

“He did it.” The new detective, who had overheard them talking about a case, approached and looked strangely at the face that resembled Shinichi Kudo's mirror image, but now had a particularly ferocious expression. “The murder weapon was indeed found in the bag, and the wife's blood was detected on it. Furthermore, the village chief's fingerprints were found on the handle of the knife. The evidence is very conclusive. There's a reason why Inspector Shiroyama accepted Shinichi Kudo's reasoning back then.”

"What?!" Makoto Yata's eyes widened, his face looking almost unrecognizable compared to Shinichi Kudo. "The murder weapon has been found?! But...but the village chief's cancer..."

"That's why I didn't come straight to you after I escaped today. Instead, I contacted the police station and went to the village." Shinichi Kudo stepped forward and pulled out the documents he had brought. "This is the real 'murder weapon.' Mr. Yuda, you originally planned to study hard in Tokyo, and your grades should be pretty good. Take a look at this."

In his hand was Takitoku Hihara's medical examination report, the one that initially proved his condition was not serious.

Logically, such files should not be accessed casually to protect patient privacy. However, the police did take this file once during the initial investigation of the case—which is why the responsible medical staff mentioned it to the villagers.

In their view, the police clearly knew that the former village chief did not have any terminal illness and could not possibly be depressed or even commit suicide because of it.

"...You knew about this medical report back then?" Looking down at the paper thrust in front of his face, Makoto Uta's voice trembled. "So, that means..."

"In other words, what you said about him making up an excuse to smear the village chief is not the truth; it was all Kudo's deliberate doing." Hattori Heiji crossed his arms.

Shinichi Kudo didn't disappoint him; he took out another piece of paper and handed it over.

One document is a report from the scientific investigation department's laboratory, prepared by the police to test the blood on the murder weapon. The other document is Daiki Nichihara's medical records, provided by Kazuma Shiroyama, his current guardian.

“Daiki Nichihara has type O blood, and Ms. Chieko Nichihara also has type O blood. The village chief used to think this was perfectly normal because he didn’t know his exact blood type. This report did indeed motivate him. I didn’t lie or misjudge, but the reason wasn’t the illness, but because he saw his own blood type. He is type AB.”

"It's absolutely impossible for people with blood types AB and O to have a child with blood type O." Hattori Heiji nodded. "The child could be any type of blood, A, B, or O, but definitely not AB. You know this, don't you, Mr. Yata?"

Daiki Nihara is not an adopted son; the fact that he has a blood type problem proves that he cannot be Takitoku Nihara's biological son.

The reason he was able to hold back until the children had left home before arguing with Nagahara was probably because he had already considered the possibility of medical accidents, such as babies being switched at birth or children being accidentally taken away. However, judging from the outcome, his guesses were probably wrong.

His wife cheated on him and gave birth to a child who wasn't his. The fact that he was able to consider the feelings of his two children and, before killing someone and preparing to commit suicide, thought of making the scene look like a robbery was already a very kind and character-revealing act.

Regardless of whether they were his biological children or not, Hihara Taiki was unaware of the matter. Having spent many years with the two children, his feelings for them were genuine. Hihara Takitoku, who had been a kind-hearted person all his life, remained the same warm-hearted person, except for his impulsive and violent actions in killing his wife.

“This isn’t about smearing him; it’s about preserving his reputation as village chief, and more importantly, it’s about considering Nichihara Daiki’s well-being.” Having witnessed firsthand the impact a case can have on those involved, Koshimizu Nanatsuki knew all too well what would happen if these things were told to the villagers truthfully. “He could have ignored all of this. Nichihara Daiki isn’t his son, and you’re just an adopted son. If he just wanted to vent his emotions, he could have left a will without a second thought, changed the beneficiaries of his estate, and then committed suicide. He’ll hide the murder weapon and create the illusion of a robbery so that Nichihara Daiki won’t be haunted by this case for the rest of his life.”

The village chief was betrayed by his wife, killed her, and then committed suicide. Given the nature of Higashi-Oku Village, endless gossip and rumors awaited Hibari Daiki.

His background, who his real father is, the reasons for his mother's infidelity, how she committed the affair, and whether she maintained an illicit relationship with the other party...

These scandalous rumors will ruin Daiki Nichihara's childhood, and as the catalyst for his parents' deaths, he may never be able to recover.

“It was precisely because he discovered the deceased’s good intentions that Kudo did this, discussing with the police not to reveal these things.” Hattori Heiji turned his questioning gaze to Shiroyama Kazuma.

“That’s right, Detective Kudo asked me to do this back then.” Kazuma Shiroyama nodded. “This matter cannot be known to others, so the details of the case should not be made public except as clearly stated in the case file. The police do have the right not to release the details of the case, and I only remained silent when he announced that the village chief committed suicide due to emotional breakdown caused by illness, without revealing the truth. Makoto, I’m also surprised that you were troubled by this matter to the point of doing so much. You were not involved in the investigation process, but you should know the truth that the detective gave you.”

"What? Of course I couldn't..." At this point, Makoto Uta's expression changed.

Clearly, he was recalling something.

“Perhaps the reason Kudo-kun announced to everyone was too shocking, making you a little distracted,” Kazuma Shiroyama sighed. “If you’re really that troubled, you could have just asked me privately to confirm it, instead of doing this kind of thing.”

Ultimately, this whole thing is Makoto Uta's own fault; Shinichi Kudo is truly innocent in this matter.

If you're daydreaming in class and blame the teacher for not giving you the points to test you, there's really no reasoning with that.