Chapter 7: That's Not Deduction at All
"Edmond Locard, the father of forensic science, once said—'Every contact leaves a trace'!"
As Makoto spoke, his gaze swept over the officers gathered at the scene one by one.
Every single one of them blank-faced and vacant, as though they'd never heard the famous principle in their lives.
"Kudo-kun, you should know…"
Makoto turned to Shinichi with a helpless look.
"Who's Edmond Locard? I've never seen that name in any of the Holmes stories!"
Shinichi furrowed his brow, completely lost.
Makoto: "..."
'Great.'
A bunch of officers who could only wait around for a detective to do their thinking, and a detective who'd only ever read Holmes.
"Actually, what I mean is pretty simple."
"No matter what kind of contact a person has made, they always leave behind trace evidence."
"So all you have to do is lift the fingerprints from the fruit knife and compare them one by one against everyone who was on the roller coaster—then you'll know who the culprit is."
Makoto smiled.
A brilliant deduction often needs nothing more than a simple piece of evidence.
Especially when you already know the answer.
"Whoosh!"
In an instant.
Hitomi's face drained to a deathly white.
"It was all his fault—he was the one who abandoned me!"
With a "thud," she collapsed to her knees, buried her face in both hands, and broke into a wail.
"Hitomi—you and Kishida used to date?"
Reiko asked, stunned.
"Yes. Before university, before I met either of you, we were already together."
"That's why I wanted to end his life with my own hands at the place where we had our first date, using the necklace he gave me!"
"And end the love between us that had already died!"
Hitomi knelt on the ground, sobbing until her voice gave out, tears streaming down her face.
"Inspector, we found this at the scene!"
An officer held up an evidence bag.
Inside was a length of wire with a steel hook attached—faint traces of blood still visible on it.
"So that's how it was!"
"The killer looped the wire around the victim's neck, hooked the other end onto a fixed point, then let the sheer force of the roller coaster do the rest—severing the victim's head clean off."
Inspector Megure's eyes lit up with sudden understanding, using his brain for what was possibly the first time.
"J-just like that?"
Shinichi's eyes went wide.
'It was solved?'
'The culprit confessed?'
'That was way too easy!'
The detailed thirty-minute breakdown he'd mapped out in advance—his clever, ingenious deduction—all of it completely useless.
"How sad!"
"That scumbag deserved it!"
"Another man ruining a woman's life—how awful!"
"Such a heartbreaking love story, and she had to meet a scumbag like him!"
"Disgusting lowlife—he had it coming!"
...
The crowd, however, was utterly uninterested in how the murder was committed.
Instead they'd turned to debating the killer and victim's tangled love and hate.
The women in particular had worked themselves into a frenzy, ready to throw hands.
"Hitomi-san…"
Even Ran was wiping tears, crying too hard to speak.
"And that's your excuse for killing him?"
"You broke up, so you get to kill someone?"
"You broke up, so you get to sever your ex-boyfriend's head in broad daylight, right in front of everyone?"
"Mr. Kishida's body is right there—do you dare look at it and say what you just said again?"
Makoto stood there with his teeth clenched, trembling with fury in the sweltering heat.
His eyes, cold as ice, swept over every person at the scene.
Grinding the words out one by one through clenched teeth, he said, "If breaking up gives you the right to kill your ex-boyfriend—to cut off his head—"
"Then!"
"Does getting a divorce mean you get to slaughter your ex-husband's entire family?"
"Is that how the world works?"
"Murder is murder. Don't dress up a brutal killing with an excuse this pathetic!"
Makoto stared straight into Hitomi's eyes, his voice dropping colder with every word.
"Loving you so deeply, I am willing—willing to let you fly to a place with more happiness."
"True love means giving the other person freedom—letting them find their happiness."
"What you should have done was wish Kishida and Aiko well, not destroy them!"
"What you had wasn't love. It was cruelty. It was terror."
"Boom!"
The words landed like a thunderclap.
For a moment, the entire scene fell silent.
"Clap! Clap! Clap!"
Someone in the crowd started clapping first.
Then more and more joined in, louder and louder, until everyone was applauding together.
For a moment, the applause was deafening.
"Well said!"
"Exactly—murder is murder!"
"If people got killed just for breaking up, I'd have died a few hundred times by now."
"It's just a relationship—this is terrifying!"
"She only lost love, but he lost his head!"
...
The tide turned in an instant.
The crowd finally came to their senses, realizing that Hitomi's speech had been nothing but manipulative nonsense designed to play the victim.
Who gets beheaded just because of a breakup?
Even medieval Europe wasn't this brutal.
...
The culprit had confessed, and the evidence was ironclad.
Inspector Megure took Hitomi away shortly after.
The crowd of onlookers dispersed just as quickly.
As if a brutal broad-daylight murder in Japan was nothing out of the ordinary—something the public had long since grown used to and stopped being surprised by.
"Higashino-kun, I had no idea your deductive skills were this impressive!"
"And that speech at the end—it was incredible."
"Loving you so deeply, I am willing—willing to let you fly to a place with more happiness."
"It's so poetic, like lyrics from a beautiful love song!"
Ran tilted her head back slightly, eyes full of stars.
"It's, it's nothing!"
Makoto's face went red.
'Well—those are actually lyrics from a love song.'
'I was quoting it!'
"Oh, come on—that wasn't deduction at all!"
"What kind of deduction was that? It was nothing like Holmes!"
Shinichi grumbled, looking thoroughly put out.
The way Makoto had cracked the case had been too fast, too simple.
If every case got solved like that, the police in Japan would eventually be able to handle things themselves—what would they even need detectives for?
"Shinichi!"
"How can you say that?"
"Higashino-kun was…"
Ran shot him a glare.
"Whoosh!"
All of a sudden, Shinichi's attention was pulled to someone else entirely.
It was that man!
One of the two men in black from the roller coaster earlier.
He was carrying a case and moving fast, his behavior unmistakably suspicious.
'Something's wrong!'
'That person is definitely up to something.'
If he could dig up evidence of those two men in black committing a crime, he'd win back the upper hand and come out ahead of Higashino Makoto.
He'd still be the famous high school detective.
"Ran, head home without me—I've got something to take care of!"
He threw out those words and broke into a quick chase.
…
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Edmond Locard — A French criminologist (1877–1966) regarded as the father of modern forensic science and nicknamed "the Sherlock Holmes of France." In 1910, he established the world's first dedicated police crime laboratory in Lyon, France.
Locard's Exchange Principle — The foundational principle of forensic science, formulated by Edmond Locard. Simply stated: "Every contact leaves a trace." It holds that whenever two objects or persons come into contact, each leaves behind some trace of itself on the other — making it the basis for all physical evidence analysis in criminal investigations.
Trace Evidence — Physical materials transferred between objects or persons through contact, such as fingerprints, hair, fibers, soil, and blood. In forensic science, trace evidence is the practical application of Locard's Exchange Principle — the microscopic clues left behind that link suspects to crime scenes.
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Higashino Makoto — Protagonist. Transmigrated.
Kudo Shinichi — High school detective. Series: Detective Conan.
Megure Juzo — Police Inspector. Series: Detective Conan.
Mouri Ran — Shinichi's childhood sweetheart. Series: Detective Conan.
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Translated by CheapBiscuit.
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