Episode 1097: Did I Do It?
Scenario: "Did I do it?" A man who was all sweaty and looked rather unease troubled himself with this question phrase. He had his glasses broken and carried a jacket stained with blood. After hastily running towards the Mouri Detective Agency, he requested Kogoro to find out what he really did last night. After he suppressed his gasps, he began to tell the antecedent slowly: he is called Manabu Sako, and yesterday he screwed up on his work, and his girlfriend also dumped him. He wanted to express himself and embody his anger and sorrow deep in his heart, so he went somewhere and spent the night. During the morning, he discovered that he appeared to have a dump on his head, and he realised that his jakcet was stained with somebody else's blood. In addition to the broken glasses' lens, he suspected himself of doing something terrible. Therefore, he thought finding a detective to unravel the mystery behind all of this might be the wisest choice.
Even though Kogoro accepted the affair, it was still pretty tough to find the starting point of the investigation. Since this man had lost the memory specifically of that night, but Conan discovered some potential clues in the man's body. For example, on the side of the jacket's sleeve, there were some olive petals stuck onto it; the shoe sole of this man was also contaminated with some pieces of concrete; and lastly, he found a golden-coloured fibre on the man's hand, which had some blood stained in the middle of that fibre. To figure out the actual place that Sako was, Conan shined blacklight from his watch onto the man's palm, and a series of characters appeared: EDEN.[1] In reality, it is a nightclub named EDEN that most young people usually go to during the night. Inside the club, though it was closed during the day, they came across the owner of this club, Leila Hata. She had some black blemishes on her clothes. She was also quite astounded when she learned that Sako had lost his memory that night. She then gave the information that Sako stayed at the club all the time, and she even showed two photos to support her statement. One was taken at 11PM, which Sako appeared to be rejoicing in singing and dancing with the other customers; another was taken at 4AM, which Sako was alone, lying on the sofa, and looked rather drunk inside the club. After showing these photos, Hata immediately asked Kogoro to stop nagging her and leave since the case was "closed". The explanation for the broken glasses and the blood-stained jacket was probably caused by a trip over by Sako himself on his way home. Despite the majority believing this speculation, Conan was still sceptical about it, as inside the photos Hata showed there was a suspicious point he noticed: in the 11PM photo, the sole of Sako was still intact, but in the second photo, which was taken at 4AM, the concrete appeared on the sole. He said that this was evidence that Sako was out for once during this period. Hata also confessed that it was Sako who requested her to fabricate this false alibi for him, but now, knowing that Sako was in fact out during that night and even dubiously instructed to fabricate an alibi, what did he actually do?
Conan led everyone to a factory nearby the club since there were some concrete grounds there, which could be a possible premise that Sako got the concrete on his sole from. When arriving there, the construction site flagger, whose name is Tetsuo Morozumi, obstructed their passage. But instantly, he recognised Sako right away. However, not from last night; he claimed that he left the factory after 5PM yesterday, so he only saw Sako in the security camera footage this morning. The same went for him; he also could not believe that Sako had lost the memory, especially for that period of time, and he confirmed to him if he really had lost his memory, and Sako admitted. He then showed the camera video taken. Sako indeed appeared in the video, even though his face was rather unclear. And apparently, the video recorded that Sako went straight at midnight and returned back at 2AM. Therefore, if he committed any crime, it must also be within the time range of 0AM to 2AM. After the confirmation from Takagi by Kogoro, they found out that there was an unsolved theft case that took place within that period; however, it was caused by multi-culprits, and no blood was involved, so the coast was cleared for Sako here.
At the same time, Sonoko sent Ran a message through her cellphone. It was a funny video of a man hugging a white statue. When they scrutinised it meticulously, the person who did that was precisely Sako! They got there, and Sako tried to recover the "hugging scenario", but it did not much with the trivial perceptions he had during the loss of memory span. After that, they met the people who filmed Sako doing that and uploaded it to the internet. Driven by the menance words uttered by Kogoro, he relunctantly showed a video he filmed but did not post it. In the video, he precisely caught Sako walking through the square, with his jakcet stained and his glasses broken as well. And evidently, he was saying phrases like "I killed him." He also said that it happened yesterday at 2AM and gave the direction of where Sako came from at that time. They then found an abandoned building there, and in its yard, they planted an olive tree, so the olive petals Sako had must have been gotten from there. As they entered that building, they saw an old man dead in the corner of the room, with his feet facing towards the wall. On the side of the deceased old man, there was a little fragment of glass that remained, and surprisingly, it matched the missing gap on Sako's glass lens. Seeing this, Sako had somewhat realised and recalled what basically happened that night; according to his reminiscence, he pushed the victim with his own hands, turned around, and fled.
Megure and Takagi were once again responsible for handling this case. They immediately identified the victim's identity; obviously, he was an old man who lived in the nearby apartment alone and always patrolled around the street and told off the drunks and youths that held a passion for partying. After the police had analysed the crime situation, they found out that the deceased was being pushed by the culprit, and the head of the victim hit the pillar in the building, which left a blood trace on the pillar. It was also proven that the culprit exerted a great deal of force on the chest of the victim, as a cruise could be seen on Koba's chest, which probably meant that the culprit pushed Koba brutally when they were murdering Koba. And now Sako has become the prime, or more technically, the only possible candidate for this murder.
As most of the evidence pointed solely to himself: the crusie on the chest was checked and confirmed to have Sako's fingerfrints on it; the blood stained on his jacket was also analysed and turned out to be the victim's; he asked the club owner to falsify an alibi; a video filmed with his speech saying "I killed him"; and lastly, the estimated time of death of the victim was precisely the time when Sako left the nightclub. All sorts of clues were indicating that Sako had done it. This is probably the simpliest case ever, where all evidence was applied to only one person, but it might also be the most difficult case ever, if Sako is not the culprit?