Volume 69

Tatsuhiko Numayama
	Deceased (drowned);

Rokuro Tokubi
	42 years old; Painter;

	Volume 69
	Information
Release date:	August 18, 2010
Chapters:	719-729
ISBN:	ISBN 4-09-122500-9
Publisher:	Shogakukan
English release date:	January 8, 2019
English ISBN:	ISBN 1-42-159867-1
English Publisher:	Viz Media
	Featured Detective & Keyhole
; Richard Cuff	; Hideo Akagi
	Aoyama's death & Conan side images

Chronology
‹ Volume 68	List of Chapters • List of Cases	Volume 70 ›

Volume 69 was released on August 18, 2010 in Japan.

Cast

Characters

Gadgets

Voice-Changing Bowtie

Stun-Gun Wristwatch

Wristwatch Flashlight

Chapters

Kappa Murder Case

Anime Episode 600-601: The Dream the Kappa Saw

File 719 - Request from the Bottom of a Lake

Kogoro receives a letter from a certain Mika Tatezato (立里三可 in Japanese) asking him to go to Koura Inn (an inn in some village of Gunma Prefecture) on the 24th of January to discuss about the murder that she committed 11 years ago. Ran and Conan, after reading the letter, advise Kogoro to call the police, and Kogoro replies that he has already done so, and that Yamamura told him that no murder occurred in the village 11 years ago and that there was no fugitive called Mika Tatezato. He adds that both Yamamura and him concluded that the letter was a prank, but he has to go anyway because the letter came with a large sum of money, and he has already spent it.

And this is why Kogoro, Ran and Conan end up traveling to Gunma. During the final stage of their journey, they are on a road in the forest, and there they are stopped by Rokuro Tokubi, a painter and former elementary school teacher. Tobuki asks for a ride to Koura Inn (and a ride to some tomb before that), and Kogoro agrees, although he is not entirely happy with this request. As they get out of the car and walk towards the tomb, Tokubi explains that he is visiting his former student Tatsuhiko Numayama, who drowned exactly 11 years ago (i.e. it is his 11th death anniversary) in the stream next to his tomb and was found in the water reservoir downstream. Ran asks whether the murder mentioned in the letter refers to this, and Tokubi replies that it was simply an accident caused by Tatsuhiko’s lack of prudence while playing in the stream.

When they arrive at the tomb, they meet a former classmate and friend of Tatsuhiko (and therefore another former student of Tokubi) named Kazuki Araiwa; he is also there for commemoration. He adds depth to the account of Tokubi and reveals that Tatsuhiko’s shoe was found stuck between the rocks at the bottom of the stream, which severely impeded movement. As a result, when it started raining heavily, he could not get himself out of danger posed by the rising water levels and the increasingly faster flow of water, which eventually led to him being washed away. Conan asks where that shoe is currently, and Tokubi replies that it should be under the tomb. He proceeds to near the tomb to dig the shoe out, but slips on the way and bumps into Araiwa, which causes both men to fall into the stream. Although they manage to get onshore rather quickly, their personal belongings are wet. Just when they open their bags to check for damage, a man approaches, yells at the five visitors and furiously orders them to leave. They comply, head back to the car and resume the original course, and Tokubi and Araiwa disclose that the man that they just met is Banzo Numayama, Tatsuhiko’s father and the keeper of Koura Inn. Banzo knew where they were because there is a window in the attic of the inn where Banzo would use binoculars to keep an eye on the surrounding area.

The five visitors soon reach the inn, and Kogoro is surprised when he learns that there is nobody named Mika Tatezako among the inn’s guests (even though Tatezako said in the letter that she would like to talk to him in the inn). Kogoro then asks about the murder, and while the receptionist struggles to answer, a man called Bosuke Nohira confirms that such a crime was committed, but by the kappa. He recounts that multiple people claimed that they had seen kappas around the rivers and streams in the area 13 and 12 years ago, which led to widespread media coverage. Therefore, people were quick to attribute Tatsuhiko’s death to the kappa, and as they wanted to see kappas for themselves, there was a sudden increase in tourists following the incident (but nobody actually saw one, for which the number of tourists plummeted soon after and has never recovered since then).

At this point, Ran notices (and is terrorized by the fact) that the name 立里三可 means exactly kappa (河童 in Japanese): one just needs to treat the three lines in 三 as dots and combine it with 可 to obtain 河, and put 立 on top of 里 in order to obtain 童. She therefore infers in panic that the letter was sent by the kappa, and that it wanted Kogoro to prove its innocence. Nohira, Tokubi and Araiwa all echo Ran’s words, which enrages Banzo; he orders them to quit talking about nonsense at once, and threatens to kick them out of his inn if they do not. This turns out to be very effective, as none of the six visitors dare to utter a word after this and look at him with fear in their eyes.

It is now night. Ran finds her phone missing, and reckons that she left it beside the stream that they have visited during the day. Kogoro thus drives her and Conan there, and the three start searching, each in a different direction. Ran is able to find her phone fairly easily, but when she picks it up, she notices a sound coming from the forest on the other side of the stream. Curious to figure out what emitted it, Ran turns her electric torch to that direction, and, to her horror, sees a kappa-like figure walking in the stream and staring at her. She immediately lets out a shriek and falls to the ground, and Kogoro and Conan come to her rescue, but see nothing in that direction. And since kappa is a mythical creature after all, they do not really believe Ran’s claim that she has seen a kappa.

On the next morning, while having breakfast with the other three visitors, Ran brings up her sighting on the previous night. Kogoro still does not believe Ran’s account, and says (somewhat apologetically) to the others that she probably just saw some weirdly-shaped tree branches. On the contrary, Araiwa takes Ran’s words seriously and remarks (with a dreadful look on his face) that she probably saw a ghost. Nohira offers yet another perspective; he warns that if they do not change the topic, they will be yelled at by Banzo a second time. But he is wrong, as Banzo is now dead: more concretely, he has been drowned. His body lies quietly in the dimly lit attic, in the middle of a little pool of horribly smelling liquid, with one of the shoes that his son was wearing before his death beside it. It is as if Banzo had been hypnotized by the kappa and dragged to the bottom of a swamp to his death.

File 720 - The Kappa's Curse

Yamamura comes to investigate the murder, and, with the help of Conan and Kogoro, is able to deduce that the murderer filled the bucket in the attic with polluted water, overpowered Banzo and held his head underwater for a prolonged period. He then wonders why Banzo is killed in a place, and Tokubi says that after his son’s death, Banzo has developed the habit of looking out of the attic window every morning to see if anyone is wandering near the stream. Araiwa adds that he has been doing so for so many years because he wanted to make sure that his son’s unfortunate fate would not befall anybody else.

Conan, noticing the shoe (which is green for some reason) beside the body, asks whether it is the one that is supposed to be under the grave. Tobuki tells him that the one under the tomb is the right shoe, and that the one beside Banzo’s body is the left, and Yamamura adds that nobody knew where this shoe was, as Tatsuhiko was found barefooted and he had nothing but swim shorts on. Kogoro is surprised by this, and points out that Tatsuhiko died in January, when it must have been extremely cold; Yamamura replies by hypothesizing that Yatsuhiko was just practicing swimming in cold waters. Conan, seeing that the conversation has gone a bit astray, urges Yamamura to start inspecting personal belongings and collecting alibis. He argues that since the water smells so badly, the murderer must have used sealed containers to transport the water into the inn (approximately 1 liter would have been enough). Yamamura agrees with this suggestion, and decides that Kogoro and he will examine the belongings and that his subordinates will do the alibi part.

Soon after, one subordinate tells Yamamura that there are only six guests and that every member of the staff was preparing breakfast during Banzo’s estimated time of death (from 6 to 7 a.m.). This means that the only suspects are Tobuki, Araiwa and Nohira. Tobuki, as a painter, has a large number of small bottles containing paint of various colors (all of them are full) and an empty 100 mL plastic bottle. Yamamura wonders whether Tobuki has thrown any container away, and Ran tells him that this is impossible, as, the day before, Tobuki took everything out of his bag after falling into the stream with Araiwa, and he did not have any other container then. Also, Tobuki has no valid alibi, as he claims that he was in his room sleeping during the whole hour in interest.

The next to be checked is Araiwa. He has two bottles of soft drink each with a volume of 500 mL, but one is half-drunk and the other has not been opened yet. Other than those, Araiwa has a water pillow, which is capable of holding a considerable amount of water. As for what he was doing, Araiwa recalls that he got up at 6:30 and headed to a hot spring. Since nobody can confirm it, his alibi is invalid as well.

With Nohira, everything is much more straightforward. He says that he was on a call with the editor (for he is a journalist traveling around the country searching for all kinds of supernatural entities that appear in Japanese folklore) from 6 to 7. Yamamura’s men are able to confirm this, and thus he and Kogoro rule him out as a suspect. His subordinates also are able to learn that since Kogoro’s arrival, nobody has left the inn except for Nohira and themselves; Nohira went out to “take some photos”, left before Kogoro and returned after him, completely soaked for some reason. Yamamura thanks them for their work, and asks where Kogoro went, making Ran mention her encounter with the kappa again. Yamamura does not believe her, and Tobuki says that if Ran is willing to tell him what she saw, he can try to draw a painting of the situation. Ran, very confident of her sighting (and perhaps disappointed that nobody has taken her account seriously), agrees.

Tobuki has drawn a vivid painting before long, and while Ran is satisfied with the accuracy, Kogoro and Yamamura are horrified by the creepy creature. Yamamura, who just moments ago was lecturing Ran on how spirits and monsters are nothing but superstition, now claims that what Ran saw must have been extraterrestrial beings. Kogoro, thinking that Yamamura is uttering nonsense, impatiently yells that if so, then Ran should have seen the spaceship as well. Yamamura retorts that maybe the spaceship is as small as a large bird, and that maybe the aliens have been shrunk before being packed into the spaceship. Conan seems inspired by this comment, and now knows the truth behind the murder case.

File 721 - The Kappa's True Form

Show spoilers »

Yamamura keeps babbling about his conspiracy theory, so Conan tranquilizes him instead of Kogoro, and the deduction begins. Conan says that Nohira’s alibi is valid, making him innocent, and that there are two reasons why the other two suspects also seem innocent. The first is that the amount of liquid that they could carry is slightly less than the required amount (1 liter), and the second is that Kogoro and company can confirm that they had no extra containers at the time of the murder. And the second reason is based on the two being able to share the contents of their bags with Kogoro and company prior to the murder. This happened because Rokuro Tobuki “accidentally” slipped, so he is the murderer. Conan further asserts that “Mika Tatezato” is actually just Tobuki, and that his plan was to wait on the side of the road leading to the inn for Kogoro’s passage so that he could stop him, take him to the stream, fall into the water and show Kogoro his bag without raising suspicion. Since Araiwa, his former student, happened to be there as well, Tobuki knocked him into the stream so that he would not be suspected either.

At this point, Araiwa challenges “Yamamura” and says that his theory does not change the fact that the amount of water that Tobuki could carry is insufficient. Conan disputes this, replying that if one actually does the math, one will find that Tobuki had very close to 1 liter: the 9 larger bottles with a volume of 60 mL each, the 16 smaller bottles with a volume of 15 mL each and the one 100 mL bottle have a combined volume of 880 mL. Ran asks how Tobuki could have painted if he had filled all of those bottles with polluted water, and Conan says that it is indeed possible. He explains that before emptying a paint bottle and filling it with polluted water, Tobuki used the dropper used to seal the paint bottle to collect a small amount of concentrated paint, and then used tape to cover the opening of the dropper so that it would not come into contact with the polluted water. After the murder, Tobuki washed the bottle, filled it with tap water and dipped the concentrated paint into the bottle, and now he can paint with total normality. Conan continues to say that the only problem with this plan is that Tobuki no longer needs the water in his 100 mL plastic bottle to dilute the concentrated paint (if the paint is too concentrated, it will have elevated viscosity and thus is unusable), which people familiar with how painting works - such as himself - will spot and find strange. Conan adds that he also noticed that Tobuki was careful to not let others see his paint bottles when checking his belongings (after falling into the stream); this is another piece of evidence of his guilt because he did not want anybody to see that the supposedly colorful bottles were all turbid.

Kogoro, who thinks that the deduction is very reasonable, comments that Tobuki would not have been caught if he had not painted. Conan rejects Kogoro’s argument, and says that Tobuki had no other option. By drawing, Tobuki can create the false impression that his bottles are indeed filled with normal paint, and that he could not have used them for another purpose. In this way, the police might think that a close examination of his bottles - which would reveal that some of them contain an abnormal level of pollutants (as it is impossible for him to have cleaned every bottle thoroughly in such little time) - is not necessary, which will allow him to get away with the crime.

Despite this elaborate explanation, Araiwa still refuses to believe that his former teacher killed someone, but Tobuki has given up struggling and admits that it was him. He says that he decided to kill Banzo because he believes that Banzo technically killed his son. He recollects that 11 years ago, there was one evening when he found Tatsuhiko frantically searching for paint in the arts room. Thinking that Tatsuhiko liked painting, he gave a whole box of paint to him. A few days after Tatsuhiko’s death, Banzo returned the box to him; he did not notice anything then, and this remained so for 11 years. However, two days ago, due to random chance, he discovered that the green paint was of a different brand. A theory then appeared in Tobuki’s mind, and it was confirmed when he went to Tatsuhiko’s tomb and dug out a buried shoe covered by green paint: Banzo forced Tatsuhiko to paint himself in green and wander around the stream so that he resembled a kappa; then, if someone saw him, a large number of people would be attracted to the forest and stay in Banzo’s inn, increasing the revenue dramatically. Tobuki further says that his theory explains why Tatsuhiko was found with no shoe on (Banzo had taken the one remaining on his foot to destroy evidence) and why there were alleged kappa sightings 13 and 12 years ago.

Conan, now no longer using Yamamura for deducing, tells Tobuki that Tatsuhiko likely painted himself voluntarily in order to help his father’s inn. He points out that if Banzo wanted his son to be painted so badly, then he would have bought paint for him. As for the shoe, it is possible that Banzo took it because it had belonged to his dear son. Conan then asks Araiwa for confirmation of his hypotheses (Conan noticed that Araiwa thought that the kappa-like figure that Ran saw was a ghost; this means that Araiwa must know a deceased person who used to pretend to be a kappa), and the latter says that Conan is correct, that Tatsuhiko went into the stream during the freezing January because some people noticed that the “kappa” was not active during colder seasons and so probably was fake, and that Banzo was a loving father who took the shoe because he did not want others to ever find out that his son had done such a laughable thing. Tobuki, who is rocked to the core by this alternative explanation, is carried away by the police, sobbing and lamenting that he has been rash and that he has killed an innocent person.

For Conan, Kogoro and Yamamura, the case is now over, but Ran says that they still have not figured out what she saw the night before. They start dismissing her claims yet again, but Nohira interjects and admits that the figure that Ran saw was him. He explains that believing that he would be able to photograph something unusual, he went to the tomb the night before, only to be scared by Ran, fall in the stream (as well) and get entirely soaked. He has remained silent during the case because he thought that this fact would not look good for him. Conan thinks happily that now every mystery has been clarified, and the file ends.