Chapter 135: The Withdrawal Symptoms of Losing Uesugi

When Police Inspector Megure returned to the Investigation Division 1, he immediately heard someone in the division complaining.

"When will the Forensic Autopsy Report for the case of Ms. Sakaguchi Chigusa's sudden death in the company be ready? Why is the Forensics Division so slow?"

A Criminal Police officer of the First Division was complaining: "Things that Advisor Uesugi could determine with just a glance, why are they still dissecting them? When can they give us a conclusion?"

"The cause of death for the floating corpse in Edogawa still cannot be determined, and no one has come to claim the body. Could we ask Advisor Uesugi to take a look?"

"That wife disappearance case is very suspicious, but we have no evidence..."

"Is that fall-from-height case in Adachi Ward confirmed as suicide or homicide? Why does it still need to be sent for testing? Where is Advisor Uesugi? Advisor Uesugi, please save us!"

In Investigation Division 1, one could hear voices saying they needed Advisor Uesugi from time to time.

However, Advisor Uesugi was not here. Due to his involvement in the Tokyo Medical and Dental University night-shift murder case, he had been ordered to "cautiously" "reflect" at home. Superintendent General Watanabe Eiji also told everyone that Uesugi Muneyuki needed to write his graduation thesis and prepare for the Specialized Physician exam, so they should not disturb him during this time.

It is easy to go from frugality to luxury, but difficult to go from luxury to frugality. The big shots in Investigation Division 1 had grown accustomed to Uesugi Muneyuki's method of determining the cause of death at a glance, doing the paperwork in reverse throughout the process, and writing the conclusion before finding the evidence. Once Uesugi Muneyuki truly disappeared, and these big shots had to return to the old mode, they wailed and groaned, finding it unbearable.

Not to mention anything else, the time spent writing files, doing paperwork, and compiling case dossiers was at least three times what it used to be!

Not to mention that after losing Uesugi Muneyuki, the speed and quality of autopsies dropped significantly. Higashiyama Takeshi and Kamioka Hideo from the Forensics Division were running around in circles, yet they could not display even one-tenth of Uesugi Muneyuki's ability. They lacked the courage and the ability to make immediate judgments, so they had to perform a "Y" incision dissection on the bodies, checking them from head to toe. It took a lot of time, and in the end, they could only provide a vague, ambiguous conclusion.

Only then did everyone realize how important Uesugi Muneyuki was.

At the same time, Police Inspector Megure also noticed that a large group of people from the Thirteenth Section were gathered together discussing something, all of them looking miserable.

The Thirteenth Section of Investigation Division 1 was Police Inspector Megure's former section. Although he came from the Non-Career Track, he considered this group of subordinates to be a capable force, even if they were not as elite or formidable as the First, Second, or Third Sections.

However, after Police Inspector Watanabe Minami from the Personnel Division was parachuted into the Thirteenth Section, the very first case they handled was a total mess.

An old woman died after being sent to the hospital due to a traffic accident. The hospital reported it as an unnatural death. Minami and Okada were ordered to investigate this case. During the investigation, Miss Minami discovered that the victim's family had a lukewarm attitude toward it; they did not report it to the police even after their mother died, simply sending her to the hospital and leaving it at that.

The clever Miss Minami immediately judged that there was something fishy about this, refusing to close the case normally and reporting it upward.

After the autopsy and dissection, the Forensics Division found that the body had contusions on the head, a significant amount of bleeding, and fractures on the ribs, hands, and feet, but there were no abrasions on the body.

Generally speaking, if a pedestrian is hit by a car, there must be abrasions on the body.

Based on the above results, Miss Minami judged that this was not a normal traffic accident; it was a murder!

She ordered the victim's son and daughter-in-law to be detained on suspicion of murder, then went to the accident scene. Sure enough, she found no brake marks or bloodstains, which confirmed Miss Minami's thoughts. The Thirteenth Section, plus the entire Traffic Accident Investigation Squad, were fully mobilized, launching a dragnet search and treating it as a major heinous case. It turned the entire surrounding area upside down and into chaos, with all vehicles in the vicinity being checked, and the road was even closed once for this.

The victim's family was questioned with extreme suspicion, but they could not obtain sufficient evidence.

After more than a week of this, finally, a witness was found.

However, the witness's answer left the Metropolitan Police Department dumbfounded.

The victim committed suicide.

The victim jumped to her death, and because she landed on the road, it was mistaken for a traffic accident.

As for why the victim's family's attitude was so lukewarm, it was purely because this old woman was a heavy burden to them. Their willingness to send the old woman to the hospital for emergency treatment was already doing their utmost; they were not sad at all about her death. On the contrary, dying like this would relieve them of a heavy moral and financial burden. They had a conscience for not laughing out loud, so it was impossible for them to report it to the police and bring trouble upon themselves.

Miss Minami's judgment and deduction failed completely. And when the bill for the 3.1 million yen budget the entire operation cost the Metropolitan Police Department, along with the complaint form from the victim's son and daughter-in-law, was placed in front of Miss Minami, she was completely crushed.

After putting in so much effort as a novice, the ending was actually suicide, and the final result of consuming a large amount of manpower, material resources, and energy was being complained about by the victim's family. Miss Minami was so struck by this wave of blows that she couldn't lift her head, and her subordinates also had many complaints about her self-righteous judgment.

Afterward, although Watanabe Eiji used his own resources and influence to settle the complaint, Police Inspector Watanabe Minami, as the section chief of the Thirteenth Section, still inevitably saw her prestige plummet.

These past few days, Miss Minami had been depressed and did not dare to take the initiative to take on other cases, and her subordinates were also looked down upon within the Criminal Investigation Department.

Police Inspector Megure returned to his workstation, thinking that if things were like this without Uesugi, what would it be like at Otsuka Station?

……………………

Just as Police Inspector Megure expected, Otsuka Station had been going crazy during this time.

"We're done for!" Section Chief Sudo screamed, facing the mountain of cases piled up in the jurisdiction.

"It's over!" Department Manager Tanaka Laodeng wailed, facing the endless stream of theft cases in the jurisdiction.

"What is this?" Police Sergeant Kuwabara Mako went mad, facing the public security problems in the jurisdiction.

If the Metropolitan Police Department could still solve problems by relying on its own resources and relatively sufficient police force without Uesugi Muneyuki, then Otsuka Station was truly finished without Uesugi Muneyuki!

Not to mention anything else, there was no one to perform autopsies on the dozen or so elderly corpses that had appeared in a month! It was impossible to determine whether it was suicide or homicide at the first opportunity. Compared to Uesugi Muneyuki, the speed of sending them to the university medical department for dissection was slow, and they could not provide particularly accurate conclusions, requiring the police to investigate and find evidence themselves. This meant the cases were slow to close, and slow to close meant the paperwork couldn't be finished in one go, which meant a backlog. Soon, after only a few days, the work of the Criminal Investigation Division at Otsuka Station had piled up like a mountain with no progress.

The backlog of work meant that the Criminal Investigation Department had to pull a large number of people to investigate and handle cases that had no conclusions yet. Therefore, everyone was forced to work overtime, and overtime meant that regular police force was insufficient, and response times became slower, which in turn caused dissatisfaction among nearby residents and the parties involved in the cases.

Back and forth, the Criminal Investigation Division was on the verge of collapse.

Ikeda Erena had originally thought that the time Miss Minami promised her was "from the time Uesugi Muneyuki was hospitalized until the exams were finished next May," but Miss Minami meant "from Uesugi Muneyuki's hospitalization until his discharge." With Uesugi Muneyuki's discharge, she received a notice to return to work as normal.

It made sense; how could they really give her five months of paid leave?

As a result, as soon as Erena came to work, she encountered a very thorny case.

In a dark alley on a busy street in Bunkyo Ward, a streetwalker collapsed in a pool of blood. Fortunately, she did not die because she was sent to the hospital in time, but she herself had completely forgotten the situation at the time.

According to the hospital's examination, the streetwalker's face was left with multiple stab and cut wounds of various sizes, and the shapes of the scars were different. Otsuka Station judged that this was not caused by a single type of weapon. In addition, there were several stab and cut wounds on the left side of her neck that nearly caused death.

Not only that, she also had impact injuries on her forehead, accompanied by subcutaneous bleeding the size of a fist, and there were no signs of a struggle on her body.

The injury situation put Otsuka Station in a difficult position.

The victim had stab wounds, cut wounds, and blunt force injuries all at once, and she had completely forgotten what had happened.

How was one supposed to determine the murder weapon?

Due to a lack of manpower, Tanaka Laodeng had no choice but to call Erena and a few others to help. As a result, the investigation was in a fog; there was no surveillance nearby, and no clues were left at the scene.

Was it a single perpetrator or multiple perpetrators?

Starting from interpersonal relationships, Otsuka Station discovered that the victim was actually a third-year student at Keika Girls High School! However, she had long been engaged in "papa katsu" to earn a considerable amount of extra money, and her interpersonal relationships were extremely complex, making the investigation fraught with difficulties.

What was worse was that because of the need for investigation, Keika Girls High School learned about this, and the School Board behind it was extremely angry, putting pressure on the police station and demanding that Otsuka Station solve the case as soon as possible.

This heinous assault case became the Sword of Damocles hanging over Otsuka Station.

And they no longer had Uesugi Muneyuki to help!

Brother Uesugi, we miss you!

(End of chapter)