Chapter 67 Clues
"Found it! The place with the highest concentration of poison in the teaching building is Class 1(b) of Senior High School!"

The forensic personnel reported: "The density of hydride there is at least three times that of other places!"

"very good!"

Officer Fujisai was excited: "The students in their class who were not poisoned are washing up now, bring them here as soon as they are done!"

Fifteen minutes later.

Five young boys and girls stood in the middle of the crowd, still in shock. They looked pale and at a loss as to what to do.

There are only five of them? There are at least 40 people in a class!
Officer Fujisai was getting more and more angry, but he still tried to put on a kind expression: "Don't be nervous, it's okay... I just want to consult you about some matters."

Perhaps it was his gentle tone that made the five of them relax a little.

"Excuse me, have you noticed anything strange recently?"

Hearing this general question, the five people looked at each other and shook their heads in confusion.

"Then in your class, is there any student who shows a strong sense of justice?"

They thought about it carefully and shook their heads again.

While Officer Fujisai was asking questions, Kudo Yusaku and Conan were standing by and observing their expressions.

"It doesn't look like there's an A among them."

Conan whispered, "Could it be that A is also poisoned?"

Kudo Yusaku shook his head: "Don't jump to conclusions. Wait until the investigation is complete."

As the father and son spoke in low voices, Officer Fujisai asked a few more rounds of questions, then said.

"So is there anyone who is behaving differently than usual?"

After hearing this, one of the five girls finally nodded and said, "If I must say... I think Tachibana-san in our class has been a little strange lately."

She explained, "Since we have been neighbors since childhood, I know her very well. Tachibana-san has always been a frugal person."

"But in the past two months, she has frequently asked me to borrow money. Her parents even asked me if the school needed to buy something, saying that the expenses had increased a lot recently."

"I originally thought that she was interested in high-end cosmetics, but I have never seen her use them. Even when I asked her out of curiosity, she refused to tell me."

It feels like being blackmailed!
Officer Fujisai's eyes lit up.

But Conan frowned.

Could it be that B poisoned A not to kill him, but just to silence him for blackmail? Or is Tachibana really A?

Conan suppressed his doubts and asked impatiently: "Has she ever put anything in the mailbox of the old dormitory building? If so, did she start spending money lavishly after that?"

The girl was stunned by the question: "If that's the case... it seems so. Because according to campus legend, we went to post the envelope together, and then one day she suddenly felt bad and started to borrow money from me."

Kudo Yusaku asked, "Does Tachibana usually keep a diary?"

"Yes... yes."

"She has a diary with her and writes down her thoughts in it...but I don't know what she writes about. She never lets anyone see it."

"Where's her seat?!"

Officer Fujisai also became anxious.

"Ah... please, please follow me."

The girl hurriedly led the way.

But before entering the classroom, Officer Fujisai stopped her and handed her a pair of gloves and a mask.

"The cyanide in the classroom has not been cleaned up yet, please be careful!"

The girl's face turned pale and she didn't dare to go in. She reached out through the glass and pointed at the seat in the corner.

"Tachibana-san is sitting right there, in the third row from the bottom by the window."

Officer Fujisai did not let his men in, and went alone to search Tachibana's drawer.

But nothing was found.

He immediately left the classroom and said, "Call my colleagues who went to the hospital with me to see if there is anything on a patient named Tachibana?"

After a moment, the police officer replied, "Officer Fujisai, yes! We did find a brown-red notebook with a lock on her!"

"Quick, take a picture of the content and send it to my phone!"

Five minutes later, as the cell phone rang, Officer Fujisai quickly began to look through the content.

Megure and Kudo Yusaku both came over, while Mouri Ran picked up Conan, who was jumping around and wanted to see what was going on.

She had been keeping this diary since she was in the first grade of junior high school, and it recorded all the troubles she had during her teenage years or her complaints.

For example, she wrote in her diary in the first grade of junior high school that she felt inferior because of her slow physical development, and for a period of time she even had to use a cushion to go to school.

Or, she wrote about her having her hair pulled by a boy in the back seat, and she complained that the boy was obviously ugly but always trying to get her attention.

Officer Fujisai flipped over these trivial matters and looked for records from high school.

"Will she be A?"

Conan was very skeptical as he didn't see any personality traits that matched A's in the diary.

But if Tachibana is not A, then why would B make such a fuss to silence a blackmail target?
Officer Fujisai continued to flip through the photos, but when he caught a glimpse of a diary entry from Chusan, his hand stopped suddenly.

It wrote that one day on her way home, she was suddenly knocked down from behind. When she woke up, she found herself in an abandoned factory with no clothes on.

This might be the reason she was blackmailed!

Officer Fujisai thought so.

Sure enough, in her freshman diary, there was such an entry:

[Why? Why did this become known? ]

[I clearly didn’t tell anyone! Not even my parents! ]

[Could it be a diary... No! Impossible! ]

[I never leave my diary without a care in the world! I am sure no one will ever read it!]

[Then... could it be that I put the envelope in the mailbox...]

【how come……】

[I clearly wanted it to help me get justice...]

[But why did Ishikawa Jōji know about this...] [He asked me for money, I...what should I do...]

"Ishikawa Joji! Ishikawa Joji!"

Officer Fujisai yelled, "Quickly capture the man named Ishikawa Jōji from among the students who have not been poisoned!"

Conan looked at Kudo Yusaku: "We guessed wrong."

They thought Tachibana was A, but from the diary, she was just a victim of blackmail.

Moreover, there is no name of Shinichi Mizutani in the diary, which means that Shinichi Mizutani’s death has nothing to do with this incident.

"It's normal."

Kudo Yusaku was not surprised: "Our ideas are just guesses based on associations, not inferences based on facts."

"It can now be confirmed that Ishikawa Jyouji and Mizutani Shinichi were not blackmailers together. Why Mizutani Shinichi was killed by A is still unknown."

Conan lifted his chin and thought: "But after considering B and Mizutani Shinichi separately...he has a motive to kill Tachibana."

"Although A killed Mizutani Shinichi, he didn't know that B was also blackmailing him. B was afraid that Tachibana would let the cat out of the bag, so A came to her door and poisoned her."

"possible."

Kudo Yusaku nodded.

He looked at the police officer who ran to arrest the man: "Also, there is a guess that I am still sure of - the person who poisoned is definitely related to Shinichi Mizutani!"

——Otherwise the timing couldn’t be so coincidental!

##
School water room.

Ishikawa Jōji washed his fingers bit by bit, then rolled up his sleeves to rinse his forearms.

The cold water gave him goose bumps. He suppressed the uneasiness in his heart and tried to stay calm.

——It doesn’t matter, we won’t be discovered and no one will come to kill me!
He took a deep breath, and his thoughts unconsciously drifted to last night.

##
Last night, three o'clock in the morning.

In a residential complex next to Tianshan Primary School, a house that had been empty for a long time emitted soft light from electric lamps.

Su Beixun stirred the instant coffee powder in the cup and put the lunch box bought from the supermarket into the microwave.

"Buzz!"

The phone beside me vibrated.

"Hey?"

He answered the phone.

"Did you do it?! Did you do it?! Why did Shinichi Mizutani die in the dormitory building?!"

Ishikawa Jōji growled irritably while breathing heavily.

Su Beixun held the phone between his shoulder and ear and brought out the hot food.

"Calm down, think about it carefully and you will know that I have no reason to do such a thing."

There was a loud gasp.

"Why? Why would Mizutani Shinichi die? Didn't he do everything you said?! Didn't he kill everyone?!"

"Who knows? With his personality, it's possible that he's exposed somewhere."

There was a chaotic and indistinguishable sound of curses.

After a while...

"Who is it? Tell me who it is?! Who is the person who killed Mizutani Shinichi?!"

Su Beixun smiled and said, "I don't know."

"Impossible!! How could you not know?! How could there be something in this school that you don't know?"

The person on the other end of the phone gnashed his teeth and said, "Do you know how tragically Shinichi Mizutani died? His heart was dug out!"

Su Beixun opened the lunch box without saying anything.

Then the voice over there became hysterical.

"Yoshimori Nobuyuki is dead, Mizutani Shinichi is dead, should I be the next one?! Tell me quickly, who killed them?! I must kill him first!"

Su Beixun remained silent, and the only sound coming into the receiver was the sound of coffee flowing into his throat.

"You are a bastard son of a bitch! You are a scum who gave birth to a child without an asshole! You deserve to go to the eighteenth level of hell!"

The other end started cursing.

Then he begged humbly.

"Please, brother, save me, I really don't want to die! Money, I will give you money, all my money!"

Seeing that he remained unmoved, his tone turned threatening again.

"Damn it! You think you can get away with this? You tricked us into doing this! It's all your fault!"

"Do you believe me? I will turn myself in now! And then I will give you away?!"

Su Beixun finally spoke: "It's okay, of course you can turn yourself in. After all, what you are doing now is not serious, it's just blackmail."

"But if you turn yourself in, and that person knows what you did, are you sure you can survive?"

Ishikawa Jōji gritted his teeth and said, "So I asked you to tell me who he is?!"

Su Beixun said nonchalantly: "I've been told that I don't know."

He played with the empty cup in his hand: "Instead of venting your anger on me, you should think about how to clean up your mess."

"As long as the person you blackmail is dead, no one will know that you blackmailed someone, and that person won't kill you."

Su Beixun smiled bewitchingly: "Move quickly. The longer the person you are blackmailing lives, the greater the chance that he will know about this."

"……what should I do?"

Ishikawa Jōji's voice was hoarse.

"That's your business. But... I have a batch of poison here, do you need it?"

(End of this chapter)