Conan's Corpse Picker

At the beginning, it did not mention the mystery case, but first introduced a relevant legend about the place where the crime occurred.

——This "Head God Forest" turned out to be a well-known suicide holy place in the local area.

The origin of its name, "head", refers to a person who has a headache. According to legend, once he enters this forest, he will gradually lose his reason and desire to survive, and eventually commit suicide here, and he will never be able to leave.Therefore, in the Forest of the Head God, there is a Ksitigarbha lying forward, which is used to suppress evil spirits. If you lift it up, the person who supports it will be haunted by evil spirits.

"..."

Seeing this, Toru Amuro froze in his footsteps, guiltily remembering the Jizo he had kindly lifted up just now.

Up to now, he and Jiang Xia have walked a long distance, and they have long been hiding somewhere out of sight.

After hesitating for a moment, he didn't turn back.

——The theory of ghosts and gods is not enough to be believed.And judging from the actual situation, the Ksitigarbha has been falling upside down, and this place has become a "holy place for suicide", which shows that it has no effect.On the contrary, if you continue to let it fall on the side of the road, scratch the vehicles of passers-by, or trip pedestrians, in case a passer-by whose mentality just reaches the critical point of collapse, and is unlucky to be tripped again, the mood may be even worse. Well, then run to commit suicide...

Toru Amuro secretly criticized the feudal superstition in his heart.

Then press the phone button and continue to scroll down.

After introducing Toushen Forest, the writer finally got to the point and talked about the mysterious case.

——A while ago, someone found a dead body in the Forest of the Head God.

Since the body did not carry any documents.At present, the police have released some relevant information, hoping to find someone who knew the body through the items on the deceased, and then identify the deceased.

It was not too rare to find a dead person in the deep mountains.

But this corpse seemed quite strange.

——Judging from the published features used to find people, the deceased was a long-haired man in a red coat.The receipts and food on his body showed that he died in the summer, but the body was wearing a heavy sweater.

In addition, among the deceased’s belongings was a car key, but no driver’s license; there was a box of unpacked cigarettes, but there were no lighters or matches to ignite the fire...

These subtle violations made some melon-eating detectives who saw the announcement question whether the deceased was a "suicide".The police seem to have launched an investigation into this matter.

"..." After reading the report, Toru Amuro couldn't help but glance at Jiang Xia again.

I always feel that according to Jiang Xia's physique, this unresolved mystery may be solved soon.

...Fortunately, I took a good night's sleep yesterday. The thinking ability and judgment that I lost now have returned a lot. Even if I encounter various emergencies, I still have enough energy to deal with them.

……

A few kilometers is not a long distance.

The two quickly walked the mountain road and arrived at the hotel before dark.

This is a three-story Japanese-style hotel built in the shape of a Chinese character and occupies a large area.The old exterior wall has been carefully taken care of, and it doesn't look sloppy, but rather quaint. There is a signboard in black and white on the gate - Aoi House Hotel.

As soon as we arrived at the door, a waiter stepped forward to greet him: "Welcome."

As he spoke, he stretched out his hand to help the guests with their luggage.However, when he came up, the waiter also saw Jiang Xia's face.He was startled suddenly, as if he recognized a detective.

Jiang Xia also felt something, and looked back thinking about it.

After staring at each other for a second, I saw a trace of unsteady murderous aura floating on the waiter hesitantly.

Jiang Xia: "!"

The two people's minds moved at the same time.

Unfortunately, it's not dark yet, and this place happens to be the entrance of the hall, so it's inconvenient to attack or kill.

The two of them sighed again at the same time.

However, they didn't show any clues on their faces—it goes without saying that Jiang Xia, and Shenbao Daxiong has been in the service industry for many years, and he has already practiced the unique skill of keeping a smile.

With a smile on his face, he led Jiang Xia and An Shitou to the front desk, and then returned to the door, ready to receive other guests.

When he came around the corner, Shenbao Daxiong couldn't help but look back.

At this time, Jiang Xia and Amuro Toru had already filled in their names on the hotel roster.

The front desk receptionist has a cold and asked for leave.It happened to be the off-season now, so the hotel owner didn't hire any extra people, but replaced the seats himself.

At this moment, the innkeeper took the register and glanced at it habitually.

Then facing the words "Jiang Xia Tongzhi" above, he suddenly froze.

Chapter 644

After a while, the innkeeper pushed his glasses and looked up at Jiang Xia in surprise.

He twirled his mustache and said excitedly, "It's that Tokyo high school detective. To tell you the truth, I've been thinking of making a commission recently, but I couldn't get in touch with you. I didn't expect you to come here directly..."

"..."

The waiter who walked to the corner turned his head and saw this scene, his face changed several times, and he became more gloomy.

At this time, Toru Amuro seemed to be keenly aware of something, and suddenly turned his head to look over.

The two sides looked at each other unexpectedly.Shenbao Daxiong was startled, and instinctively smiled at the guest.

Then he didn't dare to stay any longer, turned the corner, and quickly left the sight of Jiang Xia and Amuro Toru.

……

Toru Amuro looked away, remembering the gloomy look on the waiter's face just now, and frowned, feeling vaguely that something might happen soon.

However, he has been working part-time for a long time and has seen all kinds of part-timers.Among them, there are some types who keep smiling in front of their faces and scold customers behind their backs.The waiter just now, or just an ordinary waiter, looked gloomy just now, because he was scolding the off-season in his heart and wanted to have a good rest, but some customers came to increase their workload and so on...

Toru Amuro recalled the face of Shenbao Nobita and the employee badge on him.

After making sure that he had never seen this person on the arrest warrant, nor did he see a similar name, he withdrew his attention and looked at the innkeeper who had a commission.

After Jiang Xia said "temporarily free", the boss approached them and whispered mysteriously:

"It's like this, a while ago, didn't someone find the body of a man in red nearby.

"Actually, five years ago, he came to my place and left some things behind."

……

Five years ago, the innkeeper received a strange guest.

The man was wearing a bright red coat and had long hair. He called the boss in the middle of the night and called the boss to the room. He gave the boss [-] yen, a locked box, and a letter.

The man in red wants to deposit the suitcase and letter with the innkeeper, and the [-] yen is the storage fee.

He told the boss that if he came to pick it up by himself, he would give him the box.

And if someone else came to ask for the box under his name, then hide the box and give the letter to that person.

"As a result, the second day after the man in red left, someone came to me to pick up the box. But it wasn't him, but a man wearing sunglasses and a hat with a bushy beard."

Because the two people before and after are weird, the innkeeper has a deep impression on them:

"I did what the man in red said before. I concealed the matter of the box and only gave the letter to the bearded man. After the bearded man opened it and checked it on the spot, he angrily tore up the letter, threw it into the trash can, and left. "

"Wait for him to go away..." Speaking of this, the innkeeper scratched the back of his head embarrassingly, "Well, I was really curious, so I couldn't help but pick out the shredded paper and put it together.

"Then it was found that there were several big bloody characters 'I curse you to death' written on it.

"After that, the man in red never appeared again, and the beard didn't bother me much, so I gradually forgot about it.

"Who knew that the police found the body of the man in red a few days ago."

The innkeeper said, looking at Jiang Xia expectantly: "I'm really curious about this matter, so I want to invite detectives to come over and check what's going on with that box and the man in red. I haven't opened that box yet ,look……"

Hearing this, Jiang Xia routinely looked at Toru Amuro and asked his nominal boss for advice.

However, when I looked over, I found that the boss had a complicated look of "I knew it would be like this", which was weird.

"...?"

Jiang Xia couldn't understand what he was thinking.

However, there seems to be no objection to his acceptance of the entrustment.

Jiang Xia looked at the hotel owner again, remembering the murderous waiter in his shop, and nodded: "We still have something to do later, I'll take a look tonight. If I find something, I'll tell you right away."

……

The deal is done.

The innkeeper took them back to his room, searched for a while, and dragged out an old leather suitcase with a lock from the corner.

Considering that this matter is about a human life, there may be something terrible hidden in the box.

The three of them did not open the box in the hall.

The boss first opened two guest rooms for them, and then took the keys, and the three came to Jiang Xia's room.

……

He took out the key left by the man in red, opened the suitcase, and saw an old newspaper inside.

The date of the newspaper is September five years ago.This is a sports newspaper. The headline on the front page reads "Akagi Maru's first victory", and the accompanying picture shows two sumo wrestlers fighting fiercely. Besides, there is nothing in the box.

The innkeeper was quite surprised by this result.

Under his gaze, Jiang Xia put on his gloves, picked up the newspaper and shook it meaningfully, and then flipped through the pages.

It was found that there was nothing in the newspaper. No matter how you looked at it, it was just an ordinary newspaper.

Beside, Toru Amuro breathed a sigh of relief.

He thought that when he opened the box, a mummified hand would shake out, or something like a specimen eyeball... Fortunately, there was no such thing.

While thinking, Toru Amuro checked the suitcase casually.

Then it was discovered that this was an ordinary mass-produced leather suitcase with a lock, without any mechanisms.

The problem probably still lies in that newspaper.

……

Beside, the innkeeper looked disappointed.

Although he didn't want to embezzle the property of the man in red, he thought he had encountered some legendary puzzle when he suddenly encountered such a thing.Unexpectedly, only one newspaper was opened out of the box now.

...Maybe the man in red didn't care about the contents of the box at all, but just wanted to send that cursed letter with an excuse?

...Maybe there is some complicated anagram hidden in the newspaper?

The innkeeper sighed.He still prefers the adventure part, not interested in word puzzles and the like.