Detective Conan: The System Takes Me to Zero's World

Chapter 331: The Case of Hiroshi Haneda: The Puzzle of Truth in the Surveillance Video

James sat in a slightly worn office chair, leaning forward slightly, tapping his finger on the mouse, and the cursor landed accurately on the next file icon.

There was a gleam of inquiry in his eyes. He clicked on the file, expecting to find the key clues to uncover the truth.

"I hope this video can become irrefutable evidence. Although the current materials give us some clues about the relationship between the characters back then, there is still a long way to go before the truth is revealed."

However, after clicking on several videos in succession, I found nothing.

James scrolled to the bottom of the video file and found that except for the one he had seen before, the surveillance video records in other corners were all uninterrupted 24 hours a day.

He looked dejected, and slowly leaned back in his chair, raising his hands to rub his temples. Fatigue and helplessness spread across his face, and the wrinkles on his forehead seemed to be deepened by the heavy emotions.

Kudo Yuki frowned slightly, her eyes moving back and forth between the files and James' tired face. After thinking for a moment, she suggested, "The first hard drive has too many files and they are too complicated. How about copying the video we watched before and keeping it properly, and then check the other hard drives? This way, we can think more clearly."

James sat up straight and sighed heavily. "It seems that this is the only way to do it. The current situation is like being in an endless maze. No matter how hard you try, it is difficult to find the exit. It is really tormenting."

He forced himself to stay awake and typed on the keyboard with both hands. The keyboard seemed to be infected by his fatigue, and the sounds it made were somewhat weak.

Finally, I successfully copied the video to the mobile hard drive. After marking it, my tense shoulders finally relaxed slowly. I breathed a long sigh of relief, temporarily removing the heavy burden that had been weighing on my heart for a long time.

"For now, let's start looking at this second hard drive. I sincerely hope that there are more key clues hidden in it. We must not let the exploration process become exhausting like the first hard drive did."

He plugged a second hard drive into the computer and quickly locked the files by time range.

There is no pattern to the files stacked up on the screen, and it is impossible to tell what they are.

James helplessly checked the bottom, and the result was exactly the same as the first hard drive. According to the time of the surveillance video he copied earlier, he roughly locked a range.

After clicking two or three files in succession, the relevant picture appeared in front of me. This time the scene presented was Amanda's room.

Asaka called her bodyguard but no one answered. Amanda hid the knight chess set and sent Asaka away under the pretext of looking for chess pieces. She asked her to go to Hiroji Haneda's room and then drank rum alone.

After a while, Rum appeared with his men.

Amanda confronts Rum and mentions that she met Rum at Karasuma Renye's birthday party about 50 years ago, when Rum was still a child and got this nickname.

James' fingers tapped unconsciously on the table, his brows knitted tightly together, and he murmured, "That bald guy turned out to be Rum. I thought I was getting closer to the truth, but I never thought the situation behind it was so treacherous. What happened back then was far more complicated than I expected."

He copied the video and tied the two hard drives together to mark them.

Kudo Yuki held her chin up, her eyes flashing with thought, trying to sort out a clue from these complicated clues: "First they dealt with most of the bodyguards, probably to isolate Amanda, and then attack her. I just don't know what their ultimate goal is?"

After saying that, she quickly replaced the third hard drive, moved the mouse and double-clicked the file, and the scene of Amanda's room was still there.

Amanda sat calmly in a chair and invited Rum to talk in Japanese, asking him how to avoid the bodyguards.

Rum claimed that his left eye had a similar ability to photographic memory, which allowed him to see through disguises, and he used a stun gun to knock out the bodyguards. Amanda accused them of threatening and manipulating financial bigwigs, but Rum argued that it was a friendly notification.

Amanda revealed that she had made an appointment with the island police to deal with them. Rum informed her that the special police would not come because a woman in the organization imitated her voice and canceled the meeting.

Then, Rum said that Asaka and Amanda had a relationship like mother and daughter, and took out the APTX-4869 medicine box, trying to threaten Amanda to cooperate with the organization, and stuffed the medicine into her mouth. Amanda took the opportunity to bite Rum and swallowed the medicine.

After his men discovered this, Rum decided to give up on Amanda and go look for Asaka, saying that Amanda might have told Asaka the organization's intelligence.

The effect of the drug on Amanda took effect, her body trembled and her face showed pain. Rum finally corrected her that "Rum" was the code name of the organization rather than a nickname, and then led the team away.

After copying the video, James fell into deep thought: "It seems that Rum is really unscrupulous in order to achieve his goal, and even involved APTX-4869."

Kudo Yuki looked serious: "Amanda obviously knows a lot of secrets of the organization, but they didn't expect that the threat would not succeed. Although Amanda made an appointment with the old senior, unfortunately she still couldn't escape Rum's calculations."

She immediately replaced the fourth hard drive. James rubbed his sore eyes and looked at the screen again.

The computer screen showed only one surveillance video file. After playing it, the picture showed Hiroji Haneda's room.

Asaka went to Hiroshi Haneda's room to look for the chess pieces but to no avail. Hiroshi Haneda speculated that Amanda wanted Asaka to escape.

The doorbell suddenly rang. Hiroji Haneda asked Asaka to hide, and he pretended to have just woken up to deal with Rum and his men at the door. He said that no Oriental woman had been there, and then closed the door.

Asaka informs Hiroshi Haneda of the evil deeds of the person who threatened Amanda and that it might be bad for him.

In order to protect Asaka, Hiroji Haneda knocked her out with an electric shock gun, hid her in the mezzanine of a bookshelf, and gave Asaka a shogi piece of Kakuyuki as a talisman.

Asaka woke up briefly during the process, and after communicating with Hiroshi Haneda, she eventually fainted again due to weakness.

James' eyes revealed worry, as if he had foreseen the crisis that Asaka was about to face. "Although Haneda Hiroshi's move was to protect Asaka, hiding her in the mezzanine of the bookshelf, who knows if it will put her in a more dangerous situation later."

Kudo Yuki agreed: "I never expected that Haneda Hiroshi would be involved in this way. Next, we will continue to check the next hard drive to see if we can get more clues from it."

She noticed that James' face was tired from staring at the screen for a long time, so she took the initiative to copy the surveillance video, unplugged the fourth hard drive and replaced it with the fifth.

Kudo Xue turned to look at James and said softly, "James, take a rest first, and leave these to me."

After the hard drive is connected to the computer, the display is also a surveillance video file.

In the video, Kuroda followed the waiter into Amanda's room and found Amanda lying on the table, no longer breathing. He asked the waiter to call the police, and then analyzed the situation by himself, speculating that it was poisoning.

Kuroda Bei noticed that there was a lip print on the chess piece with Amanda's watch on it on the chessboard. He thought it was a message of death and thought that the criminal might still be in the hotel.

He wondered where Amanda's bodyguard had gone and whether she had played chess with someone before her death. He thought of Hiroshi Haneda and suspected that something had happened to them when they were together before.

Afterwards, Kuroda Heibei rushed to the waiter who was making a phone call outside the door and forced him to reveal the room number using Haneda Hiroji's important identity.

James rubbed his eyes, with a hint of regret in his voice, and whispered to Kudo Yuki: "The content of the fifth hard drive is not small. It seems that Kuroda Bei also noticed a lot of things wrong at the time, but unfortunately he still couldn't prevent this tragedy from happening."

Kudo Yuki nodded slightly: "The situation at that time was too complicated, and every link was under their control. But now these clues are emerging little by little, and we are getting closer and closer to the truth."

She skillfully completed the copying of the surveillance video, unplugged the fifth hard drive, and connected the sixth hard drive.

James subconsciously straightened his back and focused on the screen. As expected, there was only one surveillance video file on the hard drive, and Kudo Yuki double-clicked it to play.

The location that appears in the video is Hiroshi Haneda's room.

Rum rang the doorbell again, and Hiroshi Haneda said impatiently that no one was in the house and threatened to call the police.

Rum said the telephone lines had been cut and there was no cell phone signal.

Rum noticed something strange about the bookshelf and wanted to check it out, but was stopped by Hiroshi Haneda. His men prevented Hiroshi Haneda from going forward.

Rum fiddled with the books on the bookshelf and mentioned shogi. Hiroshi Haneda said "Karasuma Renya" and mentioned that he saw in the news report that Rum attended the annual meeting of the International Economic Forum as the agent of Karasuma Chairman 30 years ago.

Rum was shocked at first, but then calmed down and praised Haneda Hiroshi. Because Haneda Hiroshi knew too much, Rum had his men beat him up and asked about Asaka's whereabouts, but Haneda Hiroshi refused to reveal it.

After his men's report was fruitless and Rum learned that Amanda's body had been found, he decided to feed Hiroshi Haneda the poison APTX-4869.

James fell into a long silence. Only the mainframe of the old computer made a continuous subtle "buzzing" sound, as if humming the secrets of the past.

He leaned back slowly, his voice filled with fatigue and solemnity, "I never expected the situation back then to be like this. In order to prevent the news from leaking out, Rum brutally murdered Haneda Hiroshi and even force-fed him that kind of drug. Doesn't he have any scruples? Isn't he afraid that the matter will be completely exposed?"

Kudo Yuki responded as she copied: "In Rum's opinion, as long as he can achieve his goal and cover up the organization's secrets, he will not hesitate to use any means. But I didn't expect that the people and events involved in the Haneda Hiroshi case may be far more than these. This is probably only a part of it."

James's face became more solemn. "This series of surveillance videos makes the complicated situation at that time more and more clear. However, the more I watch, the more I feel that the conspiracy behind it is unfathomable."

Kudo Yuki looked at the hard drives she had checked, knowing that the content of each surveillance video was a key puzzle to solving the case of Haneda Hiroshi. Although she had pieced together many details of the case, she was still some distance away from completely restoring the truth.

She reached over and unplugged the sixth hard drive from the computer, setting it aside with the other hard drives she had already checked, then picked up the seventh hard drive and connected it to the computer.

The computer screen flickered a few times, and as expected, there was only one surveillance video file.

Kudo Yuki moves the mouse and double-clicks to play.

The scene shows the bathroom in Hiroshi Haneda's room.

When Hiroshi Haneda was curled up by the sink in pain due to an APTX4869 drug attack, Rum saw lipstick of the same color as Amanda's on the teacup on the washbasin and concluded that Amanda had been there.

Because Hiroshi Haneda did not mention Asaka, Rum was dissatisfied and said that according to the rules of poison use, he should have watched him take effect of the poison, but he decided to watch the news the next day to find out. He then evacuated with his men and planned to go back to look for Asaka.

Hiroji Haneda endured the severe pain and took out a makeup mirror to leave clues.

As Kuroda Bei was rushing over, he saw a group of men in black hurrying into the elevator. He also encountered a man in black cleaning fingerprints off the door handle. There was also a suspicious suitcase next to him, so he stepped forward to stop them.

After subduing the man, Kuroda Beibei entered the room and found Haneda Hiroshi dead in the messy bathroom.

He noticed that the scissors and the makeup mirror in the broken tableware were out of place, and thought about the missing letters on the makeup mirror. Asaka climbed out of the bookcase in the living room, and Kuroda Heibei asked her about her identity. Asaka asked back, and after seeing Haneda Hiroshi's death, she lost control of her emotions and attacked Kuroda Heibei.

After dodging several moves, Kuroda Bei was still hit and injured. His cell phone fell, revealing a photo of Amanda. After Asaka picked it up, Kuroda Bei took the opportunity to knock her unconscious due to her emotional fluctuations.

Considering the circumstances of the case and his own injuries, Kuroda Bei decided to take Asaka away. He put her in a large suitcase, put on a pair of sunglasses, and thought about where to hide.

After Kuroda Heibei left with the suitcase, Rum and his men returned to the room and saw the books scattered on the floor. He guessed that Asaka had been hiding here and was puzzled by the mess in the room. His men speculated that it was due to the pain caused by Haneda Hiroji after taking poison, but Rum rejected the idea.

At this time, one of the men reported that someone had called the police and the police were on their way. The two men who had been knocked unconscious by Kuroda Bei before supported each other into the room and told their companion that he had been knocked unconscious and tied to the bed by a big Japanese man.

Rum immediately thought of the man who passed by at the elevator entrance, and guessed that Asaka was hiding in the suitcase. He immediately left the hotel with his men and chased after her.

After Kudo Yuki copied the last surveillance video, she handed James's mobile hard drive to him.

"James, these surveillance videos let us know many details of what happened back then, but I have some questions that I want to ask the people here. I want to find out if the people in charge of surveillance at the property management office noticed anything unusual in the surveillance?"

James slapped his forehead, as if he had suddenly been enlightened. "Yes, this may be the key. Let's go to the hall and take a look. Maybe we can meet someone who knew about it back then."

The two came to the lobby of the property management office, where people were coming and going and there was constant noise.

James looked at the staff in the hall, trying to find clues from their faces and expressions that they might be familiar with what happened that year. "I hope I'll be lucky enough to meet a key person, otherwise the clues will be broken again."

Kudo Yuki glanced around and said, "Pay more attention to those who are a little older and have been working longer hours."

At this time, an old man with gray hair and old uniform caught James' attention. The old man was sorting documents at the corner table and looked like he had been working for a long time.

To be continued...