The Devotion Of Suspect X (13 page)

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Ishigami here,” came the low, familiar voice. “Anything happen today?”

“Nothing in particular. Nothing with Misato, either.”

“I see. Please, be careful. The police still suspect you. They’ll be doing the groundwork now, checking into everything and everyone around you.”

“I understand.”

“Did … anything else happen?”

“What?” Yasuko asked, flustered. “No, nothing. I just said nothing happened.”

“Right … all right. Sorry. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.” Ishigami hung up.

Yasuko put down her cell phone, wondering what that was all about. She had never heard Ishigami sound so uncertain before. Then it dawned on her that it must have been because he had seen Kudo. He had to have wondered who the man was who was talking to her so familiarly. No doubt that was why he had pressed her at the end—he wanted to know about Kudo.

Yasuko knew why Ishigami was going so far out of his way to help her and her daughter. Like Sayoko had said, he had a thing for her.

Suddenly she wondered what would happen if she got close to another man. Would Ishigami keep helping her like he had? Would he keep solving all their problems? Yasuko decided that it might be best not to have dinner with Kudo. And if they did meet, not to let Ishigami know about it. But as soon as the thought came, a strange feeling of anxiety seized her. How long would this last? How long would she have to avoid Ishigami’s watchful eyes?

Would she be barred from seeing another man until the statute of limitations on Togashi’s death ran out?

From outside the gym door, Kusanagi could hear the squeaking of sneakers on polished hardwood, punctuated by what sounded like tiny percussive explosions. Familiar sounds.

He stopped in the doorway and looked inside. On the nearest tennis court he saw Yukawa poised on the near half of the court, racquet held at the ready, prepared for the next serve. The muscles in his thighs weren’t as toned as they had been back when the two of them were in school, but his form was as good as ever.

His opponent was a student. He was apparently very skilled, and he had deftly countered Yukawa’s usual devious attacks and answered his every move.

In one smooth motion, the younger man tossed the ball in the air and then smashed it into the corner. The game was over, and Yukawa sat down on the spot. He chuckled and said something to his victorious opponent. Then his eyes caught sight of Kusanagi. He called a thanks to the student, waved good-bye, pulled himself shakily to his feet, and, racquet in hand, headed over to the waiting detective.

“What is it now?”

Kusanagi took a half step back. “Hey, that’s my line. It was you who called me.”

There had been a call from Yukawa on the calls-received list on Kusanagi’s cell phone.

“Oh, that’s right. When I tried to get ahold of you my call went direct to voice mail, but it wasn’t important enough to leave a message. I figured you must be busy.”

“Actually, I had my phone turned off because I was watching a movie.”

“During business hours? You’re really letting your hair down.”

“I wish. I was checking into the mother and daughter’s alibi. Figured I might as well see what kind of movie the ladies went to see. After all, I can’t really tell if the suspect is telling the truth if I don’t know my facts.”

“Still, it’s hard to beat getting paid to watch movies.”

“That’s the irony of it. It’s no fun at all when you’re doing it for work. Anyway, I’m sorry I came all the way down here if it wasn’t important. I tried to find you at the lab, but they told me you were here.”

“Well, since you’re here anyway, how about getting something to eat? I do have to ask you something, after all.” Yukawa walked over to the door, where he slipped out of his gym sneakers and into his regular shoes.

“And what might that be?”

“It has to do with where you were this afternoon,” Yukawa said, walking.

“Where I was?”

Yukawa stopped and leveled his racquet at Kusanagi. “The movie theater.”

They stopped in at a bar near campus. It was a newer place, one that hadn’t been there when Kusanagi was at school. They sat down at a table at the back.

“The suspect says she went to the movies on the tenth of this month—the day Togashi was murdered. Now, the daughter told one of her friends at school about it on the twelfth,” Kusanagi said, pouring Yukawa a glass of beer from a bottle. “I just confirmed that with the friend. Which is why I went to see the movie—to see if what she said about the movie checked out.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you had every reason to be watching drivel on the public’s dollar. So what did the daughter’s friend have to say for herself?”

“Nothing helpful. According to her, there was nothing unusual about anything the daughter said. Her friend’s name is Mika Ueno. Mika told me she had seen the movie, too, so they had had a lot to talk about.”

“Odd that she would wait a day after seeing it,” Yukawa noted.

“Isn’t it? If she wanted to chat about it with her friends, why wouldn’t she do that the next day? So I started thinking, what if they really went to see that movie on the eleventh?”

“Is that possible?”

“Can’t rule it out. The suspect works until six o’clock, and if the daughter came home right after badminton practice, they could make the seven o’clock show. Which is what they allegedly did on the tenth.”

“Badminton? The daughter’s in the badminton club?”

“Yeah. I figured that out the first time I went to visit them. Saw her racquet in the apartment. Incidentally, the whole badminton thing bothers me, too. It’s a pretty intense sport, and even if she is in junior high, she should be bushed after practice.”

“Not if she’s a slacker like you who lets everyone else do the heavy lifting,” Yukawa commented, smearing some hot mustard on a rubbery cube of steamed konnyaku.

“Don’t try to derail the conversation with your little jokes. What I’m trying to say is—”

“It’s remarkable that a schoolgirl, worn out from badminton practice, would go off to the movies, then sing late into the night at a karaoke joint, right?”

Kusanagi blinked at his friend. That was exactly his point.

“Still, it’s not entirely inconceivable. She’s a healthy enough girl, right? And young.”

“That’s true. But she’s skinny—doesn’t look like she has much stamina.”

“I don’t know that that’s a valid assumption, and besides, maybe practice wasn’t so hard that day. And you confirmed they went to the karaoke place on the night of the tenth, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what time did they go into the karaoke place?”

“9:40 P.M.”

“And you confirmed that the mom works at the lunch box store until six, right? If the crime was committed in Shinozaki, then allowing for a round trip, they had two hours to do the deed and still get to karaoke. I suppose it’s possible.” Yukawa folded his arms, chopsticks still in hand.

Kusanagi stared at him, wondering when he had told Yukawa that the suspect worked at a lunch box shop. “Tell me,” he said after a moment, “why are you so interested in this case all of a sudden? You never ask me how my other investigations are going.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘interest,’ per se. It was just on my mind. I like this business of chipping away at ironclad alibis.”

“It’s less ironclad then simply hard to pin down—which is why we’re working on it.”

“But you have no evidence against her, nothing that would lead you to suspect her yet, right?”

“True enough. But the fact is, we have no one else worth suspecting right now. Togashi didn’t leave much of a trail. He didn’t have a lot of friends, but no real enemies either. That, and doesn’t it strike you as a little bit too convenient that they happened to go to the movies
and
karaoke on the night of the murder?”

“I see what you mean, but you need to make some logical decisions here. Maybe you should look at something other than the alibi?”

“Don’t feel you have to tell me how to do my job. We’re doing all the groundwork, believe me.” Kusanagi pulled a photocopy from the pocket of his coat where it hung on his chair and spread the paper out on the table. It was a drawing of a man’s face.

“What’s that?”

“An artist’s depiction of the victim when he was still alive. We have a few men around Shinozaki Station asking if anyone saw him.”

“That reminds me—you were saying some of the man’s clothing escaped burning? A navy jacket, gray sweater, and black pants, was it? Sounds like something just about anybody might wear.”

“Doesn’t it? Apparently they have a mountain of reports of people saying they saw someone a lot like him. We don’t know where to start.”

“So, nothing useful at all?”

“Not really. The closest thing we have to a useful tip is one woman who says she saw a suspicious-looking guy wearing clothes like that near the station. An office lady on her way home from work; she saw him loitering there. She called it in after seeing one of the posters we put up at Shinozaki.”

“It’s good to see the people here are being helpful. So why don’t you question her? Maybe you can get something more out of her.”

“We did, of course. The problem is, the man she saw doesn’t sound like our victim.”

“How so?”

“Well, first of all, the station she saw him at wasn’t Shinozaki, but Mizue—one station before it on the same line. That, and when we showed her the picture, she said his face looked rounder than the one in our illustration.”

“Rounder, huh?”

“One thing you come to realize as a police detective is that a lot of our work consists of barking up the wrong tree. It’s not like your world, where once the logic fits, you have your proof and you can call it a day.” Kusanagi busied himself with fishing for leftover chunks of potato with his chopsticks. He was expecting a snappy comeback, but Yukawa didn’t say anything. When he looked up he saw his friend staring off into space, his hands lightly clasped together.

Kusanagi had seen this look before: it was a sure sign that the physicist was deep in thought—though whether the sudden revery had anything to do with the matter at hand remained to be seen.

Gradually Yukawa’s eyes regained their focus. He looked at Kusanagi. “You said the man’s face was crushed?”

“Yep. His fingerprints were burned off, too. They must have been trying to keep us from identifying the body.”

“What did they use to crush the face?”

Kusanagi glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, then he leaned across the table. “We haven’t found anything, but we suspect the killer used a hammer. Forensics thinks the face was struck several times to break the bones. The teeth and jaw were completely destroyed, too, making it impossible for us to check them against his dental records.”

“A hammer, huh?” Yukawa muttered, using the tips of his chopsticks to split a soft stewed daikon radish.

“What about it?” Kusanagi asked.

Yukawa put down his chopsticks and rested his elbows on the table. “If this woman from the lunch box shop
was
the killer, what exactly do you think she did that day? First, you’re assuming that she didn’t really go to that movie, right?”

“I’m not certain she did or didn’t go, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Never mind what really happened. I just want to hear some deductive reasoning.” Yukawa made an encouraging motion with one hand while lifting his beer to his lips with the other.

Kusanagi frowned. “Well, it’s more conjecture than anything solid, but here’s what I think. The lunch box lady—let’s just call her Ms. A for short—well, Ms. A gets off work and leaves the shop after six. It takes her ten minutes to walk from there to Hamamatsu Station. It’s another twenty minutes from there on the subway to Shinozaki Station. She takes a bus or taxi from the station to someplace near the Old Edogawa River, which would put her near the scene of the crime at around seven o’clock.”

“And what’s the victim doing during this time?”

“The victim’s heading toward the scene, too. He’s going there to meet with Ms. A. But the victim comes from Shinozaki Station by bicycle.”

“Bicycle?”

“Yeah. There was a bicycle abandoned near where the body was found, and the prints on the bicycle matched those of the victim.”

“The prints? I thought you said his fingertips had been burned off?”

Kusanagi nodded. “After we figured out who the John Doe was, we got some useable prints. What I should have said was the prints on the bicycle matched those we found in the room where the victim was staying. Aha! I know what you’re getting at. You’re going to tell me that even if we could prove the man renting the room was the same one who used that bicycle, that doesn’t mean they were the victim, right? What if the man staying in the room was the real killer, and he used the bicycle? Plausible enough, I suppose. But we also found some hair in his room. It matched the hair on the victim’s body. We even did
DNA
analyses of both and they were a match.”

Yukawa chuckled. “No, I wasn’t going to suggest that the police had made a mistake identifying the body. I’m more concerned about the idea of him using this bicycle. Did the victim leave his bicycle at Shinozaki Station?”

“No, actually—”

Kusanagi went on to explain what he’d learned about the stolen bicycle. Yukawa’s eyes widened slightly behind his wireframe glasses.

“So the victim went out of his way to steal a bicycle at the station just to go to the scene of the crime? Why not take a bus or a taxi?”

“I don’t know why he stole the bike, but that’s what he must’ve done. The guy was unemployed, after all, without a whole lot of money to his name. He probably wanted to avoid paying the bus fare.”

Yukawa, looking unconvinced, crossed his arms and gave a faint snort. “Well, okay—however he did it, the victim went to meet with our Ms. A at the scene of the crime. Go on.”

“I figure they had planned some sort of rendezvous but Ms. A got there a little early and was hiding somewhere. When she saw the victim approach, she snuck up behind him, wrapped a rope around his neck, and strangled him to death.”