A Cop's Eyes (26 page)

“What shall we do?” Nagamine asked Yabusawa, facing towards him again.

“What else? But he's a fellow victim. Keep an eye on them so it won't be an easy deposition.”

Nagamine nodded. Walking over to Natsume, he called out, “Let's go,” at which his partner pursed his lips and stood up.

Exiting the hall, they headed to Interrogation Room 1. When they opened the door, Kyoko, who was sitting behind a desk, lifted her face in surprise.

“From now on, I will do the questioning,” Natsume said, sitting across from her. Nagamine took his seat at another desk by the door, his eyes on his partner's back.

“To start … On the day of the murder, you visited the home of Toru Ohta, is that right?”

Kyoko, her gaze fixed on Natsume, nodded.

“Around what time?”

“Sometime after one.”

“What did you go to his house for?” Natsume asked.

Kyoko twisted her lips as though she found it funny. “You know the answer … an affair.”

“Since how far back have you had such relations with him?”

“Half a year or so? We ran into each other in the street and since then … You know how my husband works at night. I occasionally found an excuse to leave Nozomi with my parents and met with my lover.”

“I can't bring myself to believe that you started a relationship with Ohta of your own volition … Were you forced into it?”

“No. It was what I wanted. For the past six months, I haven't had that kind of relationship with my husband. I begged, but he'd always say he was tired or whatever … Ohta might not have looked it, but he was actually quite amazing in bed,” Kyoko offered up with an obscene smile.

“Aren't you hiding something? Didn't he force you into a relationship by using some secret against you?”

“It was nothing like that. I'm telling you the truth. I came here completely ready, and I won't lie. I understood when I called my parents after your visit. You'd marked me.”

Marked? What is she talking about?
wondered Nagamine.

“In that short time,” Kyoko continued, “you figured out that I was Ohta's killer, didn't you?”

“I wasn't confident. I am, like you, the family of a victim. Remembering people who're dear to you, it's possible to lose yourself. But seeing that hair ornament, wouldn't you normally ask where I'd found it or who'd kept it? So I thought maybe you already knew who Yasuko's killer was …”

“And you laid a trap for me. You wanted to find out whether or not my parents had shared with me that Ohta was the culprit … In any case, I was prepared, since all you needed to do was marshal evidence. Still, not knowing exactly when you'd come was unbearable …”

“Could it be that … you left the hair on purpose?” Natsume asked, to which Kyoko nodded.

“Yes … because I thought you would then feel responsible to the end. If I had to be interrogated anyway, I wanted it to be by someone who felt my pain.”

“You're admitting that you killed Ohta?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do such a thing …”

Kyoko, who'd spoken in a flat tone until then, replied with a near shout. “How else can you make someone who commits a
crime and doesn't feel a smidgen of remorse pay for it except with his life?!”

Then she continued, “Right after having sex with that man, I found a hair ornament in a gap between some shelves. The man who killed Yasuko had just been holding me and enjoying himself. He'd slept with the family of someone he'd murdered without feeling a shred of guilt. At that moment, I was filled with a murderous urge that I couldn't hold back. While he lay there satisfied after playing with me, I wrung his throat with a telephone cord. I remember that man's eyes widening in surprise, and he resisted with everything he had, but Yasuko lent me her strength.”

Hearing this, Natsume shook his head. “Yasuko wouldn't wish for that.”

“That's not true! I bet you agree in your heart. You may never be able to say it as a detective, but you must be thrilled down deep that he's been murdered. The man who took a hammer to your daughter's head and left her a vegetable is dead,” the words flooded out of her as tears streamed down her cheeks.

Then, Kyoko just laid her head down on the desk and started sobbing. With her in such a state, it would be some time until the interrogation could resume.

“Natsume, maybe we should take a break,” Nagamine suggested.

Natsume nodded, stood up, and joined Nagamine by the door. When they opened it, Yabusawa was in the hallway.

Peeking in for a read on the situation, the subsection chief asked, “How did it go?”

“She confessed to the murder,” assured Nagamine.

“Is that right? Then let's move on the arrest warrant.”

“Could you wait a little longer?” requested Natsume, eliciting a dubious look from Yabusawa. “I think she hasn't told us the truth.”

Nagamine was inclined to agree that Kyoko was hiding something.

He just couldn't believe that Kyoko would have an affair with Ohta. As Natsume said, she might have been forced into it on account of some secret. If so, what dirt had Ohta had on her?

He thought for some time but came up empty.

“Chief—” An investigator came running toward them from the other end of the hallway.

“What is it?”

“Seiji Tsukamoto just turned himself in. He says he was the one who killed Toru Ohta—”

“What?”

Nagamine and Natsume couldn't but meet each other's eyes.

Even now, his mind was in chaos.

Staring at the door in front of him, he begged his heart to hurry and calm down for what was to come.

After Natsume and the others left, Seiji desperately tried to make sense of what was transpiring around him, but it was impossible. He couldn't wrap his head around his wife being taken by the police, and he certainly had trouble swallowing what he'd been told about Kyoko and Ohta.

The two having an affair was unthinkable.

Yet, they'd detected Kyoko's DNA on Ohta's body and genitals according to Natsume.

It was not something he could accept. Kyoko had been canoodling with Ohta right before Seiji's break-in?

He'd trespassed into the guy's room to steal the evidence from the assailant case.

What he'd seen upon opening the third door, however, was Ohta's body, collapsed and buried among magazines and plastic model boxes.

Holding his breath, Seiji had crouched down and checked on
Ohta. The guy was dead—

Had Kyoko really killed him? If so, what should Seiji do now?

If she had done it, the motive would have been revenge for Yasuko, but he had been the cause of everything.

If he hadn't attacked Natsume's daughter, Yasuko wouldn't have met such a fate.

Nevertheless, Kyoko was being accused of a crime while he was getting off free. He absolutely couldn't let that happen.

Having made up his mind, he entered the bedroom. He raked through the closet and deposited in his pocket something he'd never thrown away. Leaving home with Nozomi, he took her to Kyoko's parents, then went to the police intending to put the whole case to rest.

The door opened, and Natsume and Nagamine came in. Nagamine went to the desk by the door, while Natsume sat directly across from Seiji.

“They said you turned yourself in …” Natsume began after staring at Seiji for some time.

Facing the man across a desk like this reminded Seiji of juvie. He'd been interviewed by Natsume in just the same manner, but he wasn't the irresponsible kid he'd been then. Now, he had dear ones that he'd protect no matter what.

“That's right … The police has made some sort of mistake. The one who killed Ohta was me,” he said defiantly.

“She already confessed to murdering Ohta.”

“It's to cover for me, isn't it?”

“Rather than you coming here to cover for her?”

“That day, using a rock, I broke into Ohta's house through the living room window. Isn't that what the police call ‘an investigative secret'? They withheld that bit on TV and in the papers. Also …” Seiji pulled a cellphone out of his pocket and put it on top of the desk. “I sent a message to my friend Nishikido asking for that guy's address.”

Natsume took the cellphone and checked. His expression changed, no doubt upon seeing the text from Nishikido.

“And … why did you kill him?”

“He had the dirt on me.”

“The dirt …”

“Yeah … I'll explain in detail later. That guy came to my bar two days in a row and blackmailed me, saying he wanted to sleep with Kyoko. He said if I let him just once, he wouldn't say anything to the police, and he'd also hand over his proof. If he did tell the police, my future and my family were done for. I went home and got on my hands and knees to beg Kyoko. I asked her to sleep with that guy just once, no questions asked. I told her it was to protect me and our family—”

“So you asked Nishikido for that man's address, and you both visited him?”

“Yup. While he was with Kyoko, I wandered around nearby. But then I got worried about him not keeping his promise. Ohta was a sly bastard. I thought he might blackmail me over and over again. First it would be Kyoko's body, but next it would be money … I realized that he'd suck me dry and completely wreck my happy life. So I prepared to kill him, and waiting until Kyoko had left, I broke into his house and strangled him by his neck and killed him—”

“What dirt did he have on you?”

Seiji gazed into Natsume's eyes. “I attacked your daughter.”

The moment he uttered the words, all emotion seemed to vanish from Natsume's eyes.

Seiji suffered the long silence that followed, watched by a pair of hollow eyes that could have been marbles.

“Why …” Natsume finally managed to utter.

“Your lectures irritated me. You said stuff like I couldn't just be consumed with hate. I could overcome any hardship if I had the strength? I was disgusted by you and the idealistic claptrap
you kept spouting. Well, I thought, how about you faced a little hardship too. It's your own damn fault that your daughter is a vegetable—”

Seiji fanned Natsume's rage with his every word.

The more the man directed it at Seiji, the more likely he was to pin the murder—his mind muddled with hatred—on Seiji.

“That guy dared to blackmail me like he didn't have something to answer for himself. If he hadn't done that to me, he wouldn't have had to die … What an idiot, huh? I attacked your daughter and killed Ohta. Here's proof.”

Seiji pulled a hair ornament from his pocket and threw it in front of Natsume. It was the one he'd taken from Emi back then.

After witnessing Natsume's tearful appeals on TV, Seiji thought to throw it away many times, but couldn't.

He couldn't forget the crime he'd committed. Beyond a doubt, he had struck an innocent girl in the head and stolen a precious thing from Natsume. The proof of his abyssal sin—

Gazing at the hair ornament, Natsume sat preternaturally still, as though his soul had been yanked out.

Worried, Nagamine peered at his partner from the back.

With a sluggish motion, Natsume took the hair ornament. He stood up unsteadily, turned his back to Seiji, and headed to the door with stumbling steps.

Nagamine followed him out of Interrogation Room Two.

Natsume was walking down the hallway with absentminded steps. Nagamine wanted to get to him immediately but couldn't leave Tsukamoto alone. He asked a detective in the investigation section across the corridor to switch with him before chasing after Natsume.

The man was sitting on a hallway bench, his hanging head in his hands.

“Are you okay?” Nagamine called out, but there was no sign
of a response.

He bent over next to Natsume and placed a sympathetic hand on the man's shoulder. It was shaking. Perhaps he was crying.

“We can leave the rest to someone else,” Nagamine said, patting the shoulder.

Natsume slowly lifted his face. His bloodshot eyes on Nagamine, he shook his head.

“I know what she's hiding.”

With those words, and as though summoning all his strength, Natsume stood up. He climbed up the stairs to the assembly hall on the third floor, went in, and headed to the desk with the computer. He opened a folder on screen and clicked the photos of the assailant case. Once they were printed out, he took them and left the hall.

“What is it that she's hiding?” Nagamine asked from behind, but Natsume continued on to the interrogation rooms without turning around. He went into Room 1.

When he sat at the desk across from Kyoko, she looked up in surprise again.

Natsume placed the photos in front of her. “You already knew, didn't you,” he said.

Monitored by another detective, Seiji had his face turned to one wall.

He knew that Kyoko was in the adjacent room. No matter how hard he listened, however, he heard no sounds from next door.

His eyes fixed on one spot on the wall, he earnestly hoped that Kyoko was matching her story with his.

Seiji heard the door open and turned to face it. Nagamine and Natsume came in.

“Thank you,” Natsume acknowledged, and the detective who'd been monitoring Seiji left the interrogation room. “And
sorry to make you wait.”

Seiji was facing Natsume across a desk once more. “How was it … Didn't Kyoko tell you the same thing? Whatever you say to her, she might still try to cover for me, though.”

“She told us the truth.”

The truth—

“She killed Toru Ohta.”

“Are we still stuck on that? The one who killed Ohta was—”

“She was having sex with him for the last six months,” Natsume interrupted.

“Six months …”

The words dealt an intense shock to Seiji. Kyoko had been in a physical relationship with Ohta for as long as half a year?