Outside an alley immersed in darkness, barely lit only by the lights of the shops next to it at the entrance.

"That's where you saw the suspected arsonist, didn't you?" Officer Sato looked at the alley in front of him and wrote and drew in the police handbook. "See a weirdo coming out of here?"

"yes," Ayumi nodded. "At the time, I was buying gacha at the gacha machine here, and then the uncle just said strange things and walked out."

"Well, judging from this appearance, you can indeed assume that the person you see is the arsonist, at least according to the path provided by the map, this should lead directly to the arson site, and it is also the quickest way to get there."

While they were discussing this, Officer Sato's cell phone suddenly rang - the call was from Officer Takagi.

"Takagi, do you have anything to do with me?" Officer Sato asked, raising an eyebrow. "Has the arsonist been found?"

"No," Officer Takagi said, walking down the sidewalk in the night. "Although the arsonist has not been found, ...... I would like to ask a few questions about a series of details about the case of your father, Justice Detective Sato and Cho Si Lang. ”

"Why are you asking this......" Officer Sato frowned, but then relaxed. Forget it, whatever you want to ask, I'll try to tell you. ”

"Does your father have any good connections and engage in certain ...... Percussion sports similar to baseball, hemisphere, tennis, golf? Officer Takagi asked this question that made Officer Sato a little stunned at first.

"I suppose there is, right?" After thinking about it, Officer Sato nodded. "If nothing else, my father still has a group of friends who play baseball, but why do you ask this, do you think the arson case has something to do with it?"

"yes," Officer Takagi confirmed, Officer Sato's thoughts. "If you think about it, no matter how obscure those known clues are to us, but in fact, Sato Justice Detective finally found the murderer with great ease through those few pitiful pieces of evidence, which shows that either he has extraordinary reasoning ability, or he has some information that we don't know - don't worry, I'm not saying that he may be hiding any evidence, I just think, is it possible for him to know who the prisoner is with some information? If there is anyone he can find and others can't, I think there is one category of people who should be unavoidable—and that is his good friend. It's hard for other police officers to think of these people as long as they aren't under suspicion, but it should be easier for him to think of the characteristics of his best friends, and it's extra easy to prove it. ”

"So, you suspect the killer might be among those who played baseball with my father?" Officer Sato immediately realized that what Officer Takagi said made sense. "It's going to be a lot smaller right away—but how do you keep doing it? Even so, I know of at least four more people who meet this condition......"

"Do you remember the 'カンオ' we saw earlier written on your father's handbook? I couldn't have thought of what this thing was, but just now, maybe it's because today is my lucky day, so I'm lucky-ah! ”

Just as Officer Takagi was saying this, Officer Sato suddenly heard screams from the other end of the phone. "Takagi? Takagi, answer me? ”

The faces of Chiba and the others, who were originally waiting for Officer Takagi's answer, also changed, and Chiba immediately hacked into the communication network and began to monitor the relevant data of the entire call. The location is...... Shinagawa Station is nearby, and the other side of the call barely hears anything meaningful...... Except for the sound of a hard object hitting the ground.

Did something fall to the ground? Like what...... Is this the sound of Officer Takagi falling to the ground?

While Chiba was still trying to dig up information, the phone was suddenly hung up - since Officer Takagi was obviously not going to do this...... So who else turned off the phone?

"What's the matter with him," Officer Sato frowned, then dialed again, only to find that the phone had been turned off. "Shut down?"

"I feel like a malicious act, did he get attacked?" Qian Yu said with a calm face. "If necessary, I'd like to ask the nearby police officers to go to Shinagawa and have a look."

"Let's talk to Shiratori first," Officer Sato immediately decided. "He's supposed to be the closest to Officer Takagi, and he should be the easiest to find."

"What, Takagi?" Officer Shiratori quickly replied after taking a sip of water to solve the problem of choking on bread because he had swallowed it too hastily. "I don't know, we were separated from each other about half an hour ago because of dinner, and now I don't know where he is."

"Okay," Officer Sato sighed, and then ordered - although this seemed a little strange, since Miwako Sato was actually a lower rank than Officer Shiratori, in fact, both of them knew that Officer Shiratori would never object to the order given by Officer Sato. "Listen to me, Officer Takagi seems to have been attacked by someone else after talking to me on the phone, and now when I call it, it shows that the phone is off. So I'd like you to help you find it and see if you can find any clues. ”

After admonishing Officer Shiratori, Officer Sato hung up the phone.

"Generally speaking, would someone attack someone who is walking on the phone?" Chiba suddenly said to Officer Sato at this time. "If I were the one who attacked him, I probably ...... Attacking people who are on the phone and who seem harmless to humans and animals for only one reason - that's what I want to interrupt him. And if you consider that he is revealing to you who the murderer in that case from eighteen years ago is, perhaps the person who attacked him is ......"

"That shouldn't be likely, right?" Officer Sato immediately vetoed the idea. "You should remember that I said that this case was 18 years ago, and the prosecution period is 15 years, even if we find the murderer now, it will be too late to file a lawsuit."

"That's true, but is there any other possibility?" Qian Yu asked rhetorically. "Even an arsonist can't choose to attack someone on the phone when he sees someone talking about it on the road and doesn't seem to have noticed his whereabouts. I can now think of a situation where the 15-year prosecution period is exceeded, for example, if a new crime is committed within a certain number of years in the previous case, the prosecution period should be calculated again from the new crime, right? For example, if there is no such system, it should be impossible to trace back to the first cases, right? ”