Episode 281: The Small Eye-Witnesses
Scenario: The 3 Detective Boys are playing 'make-believe detectives' when they encounter a real case. A man is killed right in front of them, wrapped up in a sheet and thrown into a truck. The Detective Boys hide in the back of the truck with the body and the killer drives to a forest and buries the body. The next day the Detective Boys tell Conan and Mouri about the murder, and Conan is able to tell where the body was buried from the descriptions of what the truck drove past and the culprit is caught.
In an abandoned house, Ayumi, Mitsuhiko, and Genta are playing a horror story using store nude mannequins, but Ayumi repeatedly blows the mood because her fear always makes way for amusement at the sight of Mitsuhiko and Genta wielding mannequin arms. They become alarmed, however, when in one of the next rooms they hear glass shattering, and upon investigating, they witness two men calling each other Kurata and Suzuki arguing: Suzuki, apparently wishing to ditch the transportation company he's working for in favor of a better salary, has already diverted some of his company's loyal customers to their rival, Sanada Transportation. The argument quickly escalates into a fight, and while the Detective Boys are at a loss about what to do, one of the men soon lies dead.
The Detective Boys waste no time calling up Conan at the Mouri Detective Agency, but while they do, the killer parks a truck outside and prepares to dispose of the body. Impulsively, they hitch a ride on the truck in order to find out where it will go and are able to escape the culprit's notice as he deposits the body inside, but in the excitement Ayumi has forgotten her Detective Badge, which she had just used to call Conan, and with no time to retrieve it before the killer departs from the scene (and it being the only badge they had brought along), Ayumi, Mitsuhiko and Genta have no way of telling Conan about the course of their ride and eventual point of destination.
The ride leads the Detective Boys through an unknown part of the city and out into the mountains, where they become ear witnesses of the culprit burying his victim's body, before they return back to the city. They abandon the truck when it is forced to stop at a red light, and while Mitsuhiko and Genta memorize the truck's license number as it drives away, Ayumi calls up Conan. The next day, Conan, his friends and Kogoro investigate the murder scene and trace the truck to the nearby Kurata Transportation Company, where Genta recognizes one of the men they have seen from a portrait of the company's president, Kurata, hanging in the reception area. The receptionists are also able to identify Suzuki as the company's director, and they also reveal that Suzuki had intentions of starting his own company and as a result has gotten into a harsh argument with Kurata, consolidating the Detective Boys' testimony. In addition, as of this morning, neither Kurata nor Suzuki has been accounted for.
The group finds the truck in question in the firm's parking lot, but a puddle of what the Detective Boys have taken for the victim's blood in the cargo section turns out to be red paint, which makes Kogoro abandon the children in disgust. Conan, however, continues the investigation and begins to backtrack the truck's route and the place where the body is buried from the few pieces of reliable information the Detective Boys have been able to gleam during their nocturnal ride: a branch establishment of a supermarket chain called "White Duck"; a number of certain gas stations they have gone past; a nearby train line; and the point of time at which the truck stopped at an appliance store, remembered by Genta through the climax of a Kamen Yaiba episode that was running on a TV screen inside the store's shop window. They proceed into the mountains and find the body's resting place, but are unaware that the killer has noticed their actions and followed them. And after they dig up the body, a major surprise awaits the Detective Boys.
