Spoilers: This article reveals the killer, the witness’s observation and the motive.
The killer is cafe baker Kazuya Ando, not either of the disguised customers. Stakeout 3 is international episode 1180 (Japanese episode 1122), an anime-original story. A witness’s apparent reaction to a visiting actor is misread: she has recognized the employee behind him.
The discarded stamp card starts the surveillance, but Ando’s own explanation ends it. Trying to dismiss the evidence, he reveals that he knows details of the investigation which have not been disclosed to him.
Two stamp cards change the direction of the investigation
City employee Miki Fujino is found dead in a park after being beaten and strangled on her way home. Takagi and Chiba find a cafe stamp card lying on top of blood at the scene. Fujino’s own card is still inside her wallet, so the loose one cannot simply be assumed to be hers.
The many stamps suggest someone who regularly visits the cafe, Mugi to Mame. Police arrange surveillance nearby in the hope that the person who lost it will return. This is a reasonable lead, but the idea of a regular customer begins to narrow everyone’s attention too much.
The stakeout room becomes unexpectedly crowded
Chiba is spotted buying supplies at a convenience store, and the Detective Boys follow him into the operation. The room’s sweets immediately attract them. Conan also notices that the supplies suggest another person is taking part.
That person is Kayo Mayuzumi, a nearby resident who heard the scream and saw a man as she hurried toward the scene. She cannot provide a useful likeness, but insists she will recognize him if she sees him again. The officers exceptionally allow her to help watch the cafe.
The crowded room supplies the familiar comedy of Takagi and Chiba being overwhelmed while trying to work. Mayuzumi’s arguments over the sweets and Haibara’s cool responses give the surveillance its domestic bustle, but her recognition is also the investigation’s most valuable human lead.
The suspicious customers draw everyone’s eyes
A man arrives with his face hidden by sunglasses and a mask. The children push to see his face, only to discover that his secret concerns his marriage: he is following his wife because he suspects an affair. The disguise has an explanation unrelated to Fujino’s murder.
Near closing time, another concealed visitor arrives and says he has lost his stamp card. This time the apparent match is almost too good. When he removes the disguise, he proves to be popular actor Ryo Naruoka, visiting without wanting to attract attention.
Mayuzumi reacts strongly as his face is revealed. It looks as though she has identified Naruoka, but Conan notices a problem with that interpretation. She has mentioned difficulty seeing close objects, and that has been confused with an inability to recognize someone farther away.
For Mayuzumi, the relevant point is what she can see at a distance. The actor commands everyone else’s attention, yet the face she recognizes is Ando’s behind him. Her line of sight matters more than the timing of the celebrity reveal.
Returning for sweets exposes the real stakeout
The official watch is paused with the expectation that it will continue the next day. The children return for the remaining snacks and find Mayuzumi waiting for someone herself. Conan has worked out the same answer and contacts Takagi.
Ando appears, and Mayuzumi and the children move to stop him. Their attempt is energetic and risky, with the boys using their bodies to help hold him. The comic scramble finally brings the apparently ordinary employee into the position everyone had reserved for a suspicious customer.
Ando’s defense reveals knowledge he should not have
Ando argues that, as an employee, he naturally handles customers’ stamp cards. He also dismisses the witness’s chance encounter with someone on a dark road as insufficient identification. Those defenses anticipate details that the investigators have not told him.
He knows that the evidence is a stamp card and that the witness only passed the culprit at night. Conan challenges the source of that knowledge. The attempted explanation therefore links Ando to the investigation more strongly than a generic claim that he might have touched a card ever could.
The card was a clue left at the scene; its many stamps led police toward customers. Ando’s job made that assumption incomplete. The solution combines the witness’s actual observation with his premature knowledge instead of treating the initial theory as a certainty.
The motive leaves a harsher impression than the comedy
Ando had watched Fujino, a regular customer, from the kitchen and developed feelings for her. When he approached her at night, she screamed. He responded with violence, beating and strangling her. His confession exposes the selfish anger behind what he had framed as romantic interest.
Takagi rebukes him without abandoning his gentle manner, and the police take him into custody. That calm response gives the ending a necessary seriousness after the disguises, sweets and disorderly stakeout room.
The strongest reversal is an ordinary employee becoming visible while the conspicuous visitors fall away. The investigation began by watching for a stranger whose appearance looked wrong; its answer depended on noticing where a witness was looking and listening to a familiar person say too much.
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