The Silver-Eyed Starlet (A Detective Conan Fanfiction)

Chapter Five:

Half an hour later, Aogi’s body was wheeled out on a stretcher to the waiting ambulance, where it was then driven off to the lab for autopsy. His suite was roped off with yellow tape, and police officers stood outside to prevent anyone from entering besides authorized personnel.

Megure turned to Yusa. “Beg your pardon, but could you please move Ran-kun to another room? Due to investigative purposes, we’re also roping off the eighth through fifteenth floors.”

“Yes, sir. You heard him, Ran, let’s go.”

“Okay, Miss Yusa.”

“It’s Yusa to you,” She replied, helping Ran into a wheelchair before pushing her down the hall to the elevators. “Mrs. Kisaki, we’ll be up on the sixteenth floor, three floors up.”

“Alright. Be careful, girls.”

“We will.”

“Inspector Megure!” Takagi called, bursting into the room an hour later. “The autopsy results have come back!”

“Good work, Takagi,” said Megure, taking the envelope and opening it, flipping through the results. “Hmm, as I expected.”

“What does it say, Megure?” Kogoro asked.

“It seems that the cause of death was actually blood loss from the slit throat, though the slit throat was not an instantly fatal wound. The victim died around two or three hours ago, at approximately six thirty PM.”

“And what about the blood smeared on his hand?”

Megure scanned through the documents. “According to the analysis, white cloth fibers were found underneath the fingernails of his left hand, suggesting that he had grabbed onto his attacker’s clothing after his throat was slit, resulting in the smeared blood.”

“Was there anything about the mark we found?”

“Yes. Here’s an enlarged photo of it.” Megure handed Kogoro a photograph. Conan peeked over Kogoro’s shoulder to see.

It was a closeup of Aogi’s bloodied palm, where the stamp was pressed into the blood. It looked somewhat like a curly squiggle around a triangle, the whole thing being the size of a coin.

Kogoro frowned. “Hmm, I could’ve sworn that I’d seen this before. Now, where was it----?”

Conan’s mind raced, until he finally recalled what Kogoro was referring to. “Say, Uncle Kogoro, doesn’t this look like the logo of this Red Venus hotel? See, the squiggle is the ‘R’ for Red, and the triangle thing is the ‘V’ for Venus.”

“I see,” Megure said. Then it hit him. “Ah! But then doesn’t that mean that the culprit is a hotel employee?”

Sato spoke up. “That’s a possibility, for certain. We interviewed some of the employees, and noticed that they all have the hotel’s logo embroidered somewhere on their clothing.”

“So if fibers of white clothing were found under his nails, along with the hotel logo, then wouldn’t that mean that Aogi grabbed onto an article of white clothing belonging to an employee, also having the hotel logo?” Shiratori deduced.

“Alright, it’s decided!” announced Megure. “I want all employees wearing an article of white clothing with the Red Venus logo on it to be taken in and questioned for their alibis!”