However, even if Matsumoto Kiyocho completed the deployment of Gin's men that night and deployed his manpower to these two areas in time, he still failed to track down the murderer - although the murderer's body dumping site was indeed in these two areas, it was a certain distance from the inferred location provided by Chiba, so the relatively scarce manpower of the organization was not able to establish a comprehensive monitoring here.

In Koya Park, about a kilometer away from the office building of Atsugi Air Base, members of the organization who had been patrolling just in case found a corpse that had lost all vital signs, although it still had a certain body temperature. After checking, it was preliminarily determined that the corpse was completely consistent with Shintang's core signs, and according to the investigation results reported to Matsumoto Kiyocho, there were seven cake tiles with a different painting from all the previous mahjong tiles at the scene.

"Ah......" Matsumoto Kiyocho sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose after receiving the news of Shindotsu's death and the results of the preliminary examination from Gin's subordinates.

The body was found in Hikari Park, near Atsugi Air Base. This shows that Qianyu's inference is correct, and the murderer did choose the place to dump the body according to the direction of the Big Dipper and the North Star. But unfortunately, this does not help them catch the murderer - the murderer does not strictly follow the specific location of the Big Dipper, but will flexibly decide the location of the body according to the actual situation, and without destroying the relative position too much, they have no way to predict the specific location of the body according to this point in advance.

But at least it's better than having no clue at all...... If we really put everything together to carry out a strong enough deployment near Shiba Park, maybe we can really catch the murderer who carried out the last case today. (The last words provided by Ryuzaki, Tanabata, Kyo, indicate that this case is likely to be related to Tanabata.) And today is July 7th, Tanabata. ）

…………

While cooking breakfast, Chiba saw the text message that Kiyonaga Matsumoto had replied to him, and sighed: the police still failed to save the seventh victim in the end, and now the eighth victim is left alone until the murderer finally escapes.

"Tachibana," just then, Gray Yuan Ai walked down from the upper floor with a newspaper. "Do you remember 'Tanabata, Kyo'?"

"What's wrong?" Qian Yu turned his head and looked at Gray Yuan's expression with some curiosity.

"I found some clippings of old newspapers in the cabinet when I was looking for grass just now," Ash Hara Ai handed Chiba an A4 piece of paper with a newspaper news block on it. "The clippings were all in chronological order, so I looked for news about Tanabata, and then it was Tanabata in 1992, when a fire broke out in Kyoto and killed two people. But that's not the point, the most important thing is-"

"What's the point—" Chiba asked, halfway through the question, he found the part of the newspaper that Ash Hara was concerned about about the fire. "This?"

The news was accompanied by six pictures, one of which was a burning hotel with the sign "Hotel Vega"; In the second picture, seven people are seated together, draped in blankets in various postures, drinking hot water; The third picture is a young man who tried to rush into the fire through the gate, but was stopped by firefighters; The fourth picture shows two bodies waiting to be carried into an ambulance; The fifth and sixth images are photographs of the two deceased, respectively. According to the narrative, the deceased in the fifth photo was the one who started a fire that smoked in the escape passage on the fifth floor and caused a fire, making the escape staircase unusable, while the deceased in the sixth photo was found at the elevator entrance on the sixth floor.

The most informative photo is the second one, because there seem to be a lot of acquaintances in this photo - how do these seven people drinking hot water look like the seven people who have been killed in the mahjong card case?

If the murderer's reason for killing was because these seven people appeared here on Tanabata, then the reason was......

Chiwa shifted her gaze to the sixth black-and-white photo, a girl with a very sunny smile, whose name was Nanako Honjo and a resident of Mitaka City, Tokyo.

Her body was found at the entrance of an elevator on the sixth floor......

"The guy in the third picture might really be driven by hatred and be desperate, don't you think?" Gray Yuan looked at Qian Yu and said.

"yes," Chiba nodded. "If that elevator can only seat seven people, then maybe he really killed that bastard and the remaining six innocent people?"

Unlike several other deceased, Shuhei Jinno's mahjong tiles are a cake, and if this is an allusion to the elevator, I'm afraid the purpose is to show that Shuhei Jinno forcibly pulled Nanako Motogami out of the elevator at that time, and then occupied the last position himself.

"Those six aren't innocent," Gray Plains shook his head. "He who condones evil is no different from evil spirits."

If those six people really have a sense of justice, I'm afraid that Shuhei Jino's attempt to forcibly pull Nanako Motogami off the elevator will not succeed at all - it is very simple for seven people to subdue one person.

"You can't say that," Qian Yu sighed. "If I were Shuhei Jinno, I would have an extreme way to send me to hell after I die, but it would allow me to go to hell later. Because if I do, they will have to compromise. ”

"What's the solution?" Gray Plains asked.

"If I were Shuhei Jinno, I would always wait outside the door to interfere with them," Chiba said. "After they all went in, I pressed the button of the elevator so that the elevator couldn't close, and they couldn't get out. As long as they don't give me a place, then I won't let them go down and let everyone die together. If they still want to live, they can only sacrifice one of their seven and let me in. ”

"And then they sacrificed the weakest of the dead, Miss Nanako Motogami, right?" A sad expression appeared on Gray Plains' face.

"yes," Chiba nodded. "There is an advantage to sacrificing her, because she is the weakest, so she has the worst ability to resist and resist blows. With the size of an adult, I'm afraid that three or two punches can knock her to the ground and lose her ability to fight, and there is no need to worry that she will copy what Shuhei Jinno did before. ”

With all this in mind, and then the very anxious-looking young man in the third photo, both Chiba and Gray Plains can come to an almost obvious conclusion.

The person in the third photo must have something to do with Nanako Motojo, and it was this relationship that made him extremely hateful for the seven people who took Nanako Motogami's life.