Amino had had a briefcase—the kind a salaryman might have. Enbi had had a small Boston bag. And Inuzuka... had had a large roller bag. I'd brought it out from Inuzuka's room into the hall earlier on Kirigiri's orders. I remembered it being awfully heavy.
If the body had originally been inside of this roller bag... then the owner of the bag would be the culprit. The culprit is Kou Inuzuka!
Or, no, more accurately, I guess it would be "someone disguised as Inuzuka". He stuffed his body double in the carry-on bag, pretended to be Inuzuka himself, and acted innocent as he came with us together to the Sirius Observatory. If I think about it, then maybe his observations that he pretended were so insightful were actually just the result of his own prior research.
And then, once he was done setting up the body parts, he hid inside of his own bag.
"I get it now, Kirigiri-chan. I'm sorry I was so suspicious of you. You didn't deserve all that."
"Have I finally been cleared of suspicion?"
"Yeah—the culprit's right here."
I backed off a little, so that I could get a running start.
"The culprit is you! Inuzuka!"
I gave the bag a dropkick, spectacularly sending it flying. I immediately followed up with the final blow, jumping on top of the overturned bag.
Then, I put my hand on the closed zipper—
—and opened it.
And then from inside, Inuzuka—
—did not appear.
The bag was stuffed full of whiskey, vodka, and other various bottles of liquor.
"...Huh?"
What the heck? Wasn't the culprit supposed to be lying in wait...?
"What are you doing, Onee-sama?" Kirigiri watched me, wide-eyed.
"No, well, I mean... Didn't the culprit dismember the body double and bring him here? So if you think about it, shouldn't the person with the biggest bag obviously be the culprit? Inuzuka, right? I mean, the other two definitely couldn't fit a whole body in their bags..."
Uh? What's going on?
I couldn't think of any way that a body could be transported in a briefcase or an overnight Boston bag. I thought the carry-on bag was the sure winner, but there was nothing but alcohol inside. Actually, thinking back, I think even Inuzuka himself said that that was what was inside there.
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Which means... No one brought the body?
I automatically turned to Kyouko Kirigiri with suspicion.
What if all of her reasoning up until now was just a lie to try and deceive me?
"Don't tell me you still think I'm the culprit," Kirigiri said, seeing right through me.
"Well... wasn't your reasoning all just nonsense?! They dismembered the body to carry it? Who did, and how? If you're going to bring a whole body, you'd need a bag as big as this carry-on bag at the very least, right? But it turns out it was just alcohol in here. Nobody brought a body."
"My reasoning is not nonsense," Kirigiri said unflinchingly. "First of all, look at the bag and think about it. Even if it would be possible to fit a dismembered corpse inside, do you think someone as large as Inuzuka-san would be able to fit?"
"...Ooh. Yeah, that wasn't actually going to happen."
"I believe those bottles of alcohol really were what Inuzuka-san brought with him."
"Then who brought the body double's corpse here, and how did they do it?"
"I believe the culprit simply drove it here."
"Whaa?"
"If it were even just earlier in the day, when the snow had not yet accumulated, driving here would have sufficed."
"Oh... I completely overlooked that."
"Perhaps the victim intended to be the body double was summoned for an earlier time. Then, he was killed and dismembered. However, I believe he was killed elsewhere. After all, there would be the possibility that traces of evidence would be left if a murder had been committed here beforehand. If that were the case, then perhaps one of us detectives would have noticed them."
"I see... But isn't there a hole in the theory that the culprit brought the body here before we arrived? As soon as we got here, we went around investigating just in case. There wasn't a body anywhere then, was there?"
"The body was very skillfully hidden."
