Episode 1101: Pride of the Immortal Man
Scenario: Everything began with a company called "Tsukuba Corporation", where it had an arrogant president, Shunichi Tsukuba, who always called himself "invincible and immortal"; he has been taking care of this company for five years already, succeeding his father's position as president (it was originally a furniture manufacturing firm founded by Shunichi's grandfather and was passed over to Shunichi's father and expanded in size; after the death of his father, Shunichi became the lead and began to handle a variety of businesses rather than specialising in furniture production). It is just this kind of young president who has decisive strategies and bold ambitions and who wants to give his company a change. He has recently come across some assaults that would take his life... This was already the second time he encountered the attack incident. He liaised with the company staff members for urgent meetings, informing them regarding the situation. The responses he got from the staff members were suggestions to contact the police, as Shunichi might be on the verge of losing his life. However, Shunichi sneered and denied this proposal, as he sees himself as "an immortal man" so he would not back down in this matter, and even boasted that he would take down the attacker next time he saw him. After his haughty remark, the meeting room was filled with an atmosphere of unconvincingness. Notwithstanding that, all of them knew that it was no way to make Shunichi change his decision, as he barely listened to any of the company staff members. He has his own mission; he has his own way of making decisions; he has his own manner... The only person he would listen to must be his aunt though, named Sadako Machigawa. Despite all of the staff members looked fairly worried concerning their president's situation, his relentless way of dealing with company matters was bound to receive grudges from certain people; hatred, dubiousness, and malice were covertly lurking among the company without the knowledge of Shunichi...
The next morning, as usual, Kogoro and Conan had their customary stroll out on the street of Beika. As they gradually approached an intersection that leads to an alley, they saw a person lying on the ground, with their legs exposed out of the wall. Initially, Kogoro thought it was just a drunk person who passed out casually on the street, but when he closely examined it, they realised it was nothing but a corpse! When the police arrived there and did the investigation, they found out the identity of the corpse was... Shunichi Tsukuba?!?
The police found some clues that might be essential to solving this puzzling case:
- The estimated time of death is between 8PM and 10PM last night;
- The victim fell from the roof of the building, which is situated right on top of the corpse;
- A piece of paper was found in the victim's pocket, seems to be a criminal manifesto (see right);
- Shunichi phoned his aunt Machigawa last night at 9:40 (the last call he made according from his call history), muttering how stressed he was and how tired he was "acting strong";
- An aquiantence of Shunichi called the secretary, Aoi Hirose, last night also, informing her that he saw Shunichi leaving a psychiatric clinic. Even though the president denied the fact.
With these information, Kogoro and Megure were wondering if this was suicide or homicide - if it was suicide, according to the phone call and clinic witness, it could be resonable due to his tiredness of "acting strong", but the criminal manifesto would not explain it, as it would obviously be murder if you see it that way. With all the perplexity, they decided to investigate the two previous attack incidents undertook by Shunichi that he did not report to the police. The second incident took place at the Sudako 2-chrome Intersection. Supposedly, Shunichi was waiting for the light to change on the pavement, and he was nearly struck by a car ignoring the traffic light. However, when they told the traffic police nearby about the situation, the police insisted on saying it would not happen since at that time there was a movie filming going on in the same place, so the entire premise was closed for shooting only. In other words, no irrelevent people (including Shunichi) and random vehicles (including the culprit X), would be allowed inside at that time. The first incident took place at the Kimedai Train Station; allegedly, Shunichi was being pushed by the culprit while he was waiting for the train to arrive on the platform. However, when they checked the security footage image of that station, at that time of that day, the station was closed due to electrical issues; in other words, there were no trains passing by and no way Shunichi would be let in to wait for the train, and the entry of the culprit also seemed quite unjustifiable. Takagi was confused as well; as they verified both of the locations, nothing useful was found. He said: "What do you suppose this means? Not only did we fail to find any clues about the culprit, but we learned neither attack could have happened". Since then, they started to realise it was not a commonplace case this time.
On the other end, Chiba found something in Shunichi's computer; in the search engine, it recorded that he had searched "how to tell the difference between a suicide and a murder"; and it seemed that he also ahd searched about "self-defence". After learning these clues, Kogoro declared that he figured out what obscurely happened: Shunichi was murdered, because he planned to kill someone else. He first attempted to murder Person X and make it look like a suicide. He thus used the strategy to fake a story, telling all staff members that "his life is in danger". That way, he would make a murder case look like a self-defense, and then the police would consider the victim killed by Shunichi the culprit who was targeting his life all along; laced with the criminal manifesto Shunichi forged as well, it looked like that Person X was attempting to murder him for the third time but was anti-killed by Shunichi. Unfortunately, he was not cautious enough and was eventually thrown by Person X from the roof of the building, so the fake criminal manifesto remained in his pocket - he did not get the chance to place it at his will. To explain the phone call, it must have been Person X who pretended to be Shunichi after he killed him, just to create the illusion. At the same time, the suspect circle could also be narrowed a bit, as that Person X must be close to the victim, judging by the fact that they knew who to call after they implemented the murder. Kogoro also deduced that Person X must also have called the victim's aunt to the crime scene this morning in order to hand in the phone call information to the police, disguising it as a solid suicide.
The door opened in the meantime, and it was Gakuto Nogi, the vice-president of "Tsukuba Corporation". He confessed about calling the victim's aunt this morning, but there was no reason for him to carry out the murder; he also claimed that Shunichi was only pretending to be strong and killed himself to escape from reality, admitting himself on the phone that he was a phony and a loser. Conan also wandered around the company, and everyone was discussing how inconcievable it was to know that their "invincible" president was in fact timid, which shocked their minds. Hearing all the discussions, Conan had somewhat of an idea of the case, and rejected Kogoro's deduction. He gathered the case-related personnels and gently revealed who was Person X.
