Conan Moslin

The intense flames stung everyone's eyes.

"That sound just now?" "In the garage!"

When I rushed out the back door for the first time, the flames had already enveloped the entire garage.

The terrifying heat waves scorched their exposed skin, hitting every shocked face equally.

After being stunned for a few seconds, someone suddenly said something like this:

"Ms. Kuroba and Ms. Oki haven't come back yet. Could it be..."

The two of them in the garage?

It was not until Hattori Heiji turned around and called Miss Iwai to go back to the hotel to get a fire extinguisher that everyone started to act again in a panic as if they had just woken up from a dream.

"If the fire is not put out quickly, the book will..." Fujisawa Toshiaki murmured worriedly, and his words were immediately caught by the two detectives on the side.

Conan glanced at Fujisawa, and then exchanged silent glances with Haibara Ai.

He wanted to make sure whether Li An was in the garage.

"Impossible." Xiao Ai retorted in a low voice without thinking, "She knows the garage is dangerous and won't go near it on purpose."

"Then the one in the garage now is..."

Before Kawazu Ikuo could finish his words, he grabbed the emotional Toba Kento and said, "Hey! Calm down!"

"Ayako! Ayako!!!" Kento Toba, who was held by him, screamed heartbreakingly and almost rushed into the fire to save people.

It’s just that the physical education teacher next to him seemed to be extremely strong, making his steps so heavy that he refused to move at all.

As soon as the tears fell, they evaporated completely.

……

Oki Ayako couldn't shed any tears at all.

The endless flames burned her gradually numb nerves. From the moment the flames exploded before her eyes, the terrifying feeling of suffocation had been with her.

"Ayako, I hid the first edition in the back seat of the car in the garage."

The murderer in the memory had a gentle face, just as he had been to everyone else.

——There is no sign that he has killed a person.

The other person held her hand with both hands clasped together as if begging her, and the warmth from their fingertips still seemed to remain on his hand.

It was so hot that it was heart-wrenching.

"It's better if we don't go back together. Just wait in the bathroom for a while, okay?"

"Just let me handle that."

Ooki Ayako agreed to Kento's words, but was too lazy to go back to deal with the group's questions, so she just waited in the bathroom for a while and then went out.

None of this is the point.

The point is - there is no way that the researcher didn't know about the oil tank leakage problem because he did everything.

So…why did he ask her to come over to look for the book?

Ooki Ayako took a deep breath, struggling to recall the instructions she had received not so long ago.

"If Ms. Ohki wants to smoke outside, please don't go near the garage..."

"Very dangerous."

Smoking...lighter...leaked gasoline...

There is only one reason.

He was the one who wanted to kill her.

……

The hotel’s fire prevention measures were pretty effective, and the fire in the garage was quickly put out soon after the fire extinguisher arrived.

The fire did not spread, and the car was burned black. Except for one place that was seriously damaged, there was almost no change in other places.

Conan and Ai were stopped outside the garage by the enthusiastic Maria, while Kento Toba called Ayako's name and rushed over to find her.

On the other side, Fujisawa Toshiaki carefully came to the back seat of the car, opened the door and looked inside.

He didn't find what he was looking for, but...

"Strange, what is this?"

Hearing the sound, Hattori Heiji opened the door on the other side and looked out. Almost immediately, he discovered that there seemed to be burnt rectangular outlines scattered and stacked on the seats at the back of the car.

Judging from the size, it looks a bit like... a playing card?

He leaned in closer to take a look, and was able to barely make out the spades and clubs patterns that belonged to a playing card from the scattered fragments, as well as the checkered pattern on the back of the card that had been burnt black.

Wait, there seems to be something else.

When Hattori Heiji was the last one to come out of the garage, he heard Toda Maria asking the two people who had left the garage: "But why did the garage suddenly catch fire...?"

Toba Kento shook his head absentmindedly: "I don't know..."

"I think - it's probably because of this." Hattori Heiji turned over his handkerchief and showed everyone a burnt mobile phone.

"Someone called this phone, and the gasoline in the garage caused the fire." He looked back at the garage and said thoughtfully, "It seems that there is a signal here too..."

"This is……"

“This is our boss’s phone!”

Even though it was burned beyond recognition in the fire, Hitomi Iwai often saw her boss using this phone to make calls, so she recognized it at a glance.

"This phone... is always carried by the boss. How did it get here?"

Shimizu Nanako guessed: "Maybe the boss left it there."

"Impossible! I found this in the back seat, hidden under the burnt playing cards. So... someone must have put it there on purpose." Hattori Heiji immediately shook his head, "Also, there are burn marks on the interface of the phone, it seems that someone made a device to cause sparks."

He was stating the facts, but when he heard the word "poker cards", Haibara Ai immediately frowned.

Conan also looked up in shock.

"In other words, someone deliberately called his number and caused the fire." Hattori Heiji concluded, "This fire was not an accident, but this person's purpose... I don't know yet."

Coincidentally, Conan thought so too.

No one can steal her cards from the magician.

But the poker cards and the phone call... it was as if someone was deliberately trying to direct the suspicion of the case to Sister Li An...

However, faced with the disaster scene before them, they had no way of finding out anything.

"The question now is, where did Ms. Kurian and Ms. Ayako go?" Maria asked in a soul-searching way, "If they were outside, why haven't they come here yet when there was such a big fire?"

Everyone looked at each other in silence and shook their heads in unison.

"I suddenly have an idea. I wonder if you have thought of it?" Kawazu Ikuo suddenly said, "The one who caused this fire was the owner of the hotel."

"If the boss who rolled down the cliff with his car and people is still alive, don't you think everything fits together? It must be him!" He speculated, "He must be hiding somewhere watching us now, right?"

He is watching you from heaven.

"You're right! If there was a dummy sitting in the car, or something..." Maria also thought it made sense. "It seems that there was such a scene in the novel."

“That’s the storyline of ‘The Empty House.’”