The Devotion Of Suspect X (32 page)

Yasuko swallowed. It was taking all of her effort just to breathe at a steady rhythm. She didn’t know how, but this man had figured out the truth, even if he didn’t know the exact details.
Ishigami was protecting someone—someone else was the murderer.
Now Yukawa was trying to save his friend in any way that he could. What would be the easiest way to get his friend off the hook? Why, by convincing the real murderess to turn herself in. By getting her to make a confession to the police that would sweep away everything his friend had brought upon himself.

Yasuko glanced fearfully at the man beside her and found, much to her surprise, that he was smiling.

“You think I’ve come to convince you, don’t you?”

“No, why would I—” Yasuko jerked her head in denial. “I don’t see what—what you would be trying to convince me to do…”

“You’re right. I’m sorry, don’t mind me.” He lowered his head. “Still, there was something I wanted you to know. That’s why I’m here.”

“What might that be?”

“Well.” Yukawa paused a moment before speaking again. “I want you to know that you know nothing of the truth.”

Yasuko’s eyes widened with surprise. Yukawa wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Your alibi’s the real deal,” he continued. “You went to that movie theater when you said you did, and your daughter went with you. I can’t imagine a girl in middle school holding up under such persistent questioning from the police otherwise. Neither of you is lying.”

“That’s true. I’m not lying. But why did you have to tell me that?”

“Don’t you find it odd that you
haven’t
had to lie? That the police have gone so easy on you? See, Ishigami put it together so you would
only
have to tell the truth. No matter how hard the detectives pushed, nothing would ever lead decisively to your doorstep. I have no doubt that, even now, you’re unaware of most of what he’s done. You might realize he’s pulled off some nifty trick to get you out of trouble, but you’re not entirely sure what that is. Am I wrong?”

“I’m sorry, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” Yasuko tried smiling, but her mouth felt as if it were made of plastic.

“He has made a terrible sacrifice in order to protect you, you know. A sacrifice so great, ordinary people such as you and I couldn’t even imagine doing such a thing. I’m sure that, from the night it all happened, he was prepared to take your place in a jail cell, should the situation call for that. His entire plan was constructed around that commitment. To put it another way, he knew he could do anything, as long as it didn’t interfere with that trump card. Yet what a trump card it is! Who could possibly follow through on such a plan? Ishigami knew it would be near impossible himself. That’s why he cut off his own path of retreat—so he would never be able to turn back once things were put into motion. That’s what most surprises me about all that he’s done.”

Yasuko was confused. At first, she had thought she knew what the professor was driving at, but now she wasn’t so sure. Whatever it was, she had a feeling that something unpleasant was waiting for her in his words.

And yet everything he had said so far was true; he had simply revealed another side of the truth, one she hadn’t considered closely until this moment. Yasuko
didn’t
know what Ishigami had been up to all this time—not really. And she had indeed found it strange that the detectives had been treating her with kid gloves. Not only that, but on the three occasions they had come to question her they had never even come close to guessing what had actually happened.

And Yukawa knew why—

She saw him check his watch.

“It pains me to have to tell you these things,” he said at length, his face tightening in a grimace. “Because I know that Ishigami wouldn’t want me to. I’m sure he’d rather you didn’t know the truth no matter what happened. Not for his sake, but for yours. Because if you knew, you would have to live bearing even more pain than you already do. Yet I have to tell you. I feel like I would be doing him a disservice as a friend if I didn’t make you aware of how much love he has for you, how he has gambled his very life for you. Even if it’s against his wishes, I can’t bear having you not know.”

Yasuko’s heart was racing. Her breathing had grown shallow; she felt as if she might faint.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.” She meant to speak forcefully, but her voice came out weak and trembling. “If … If you have something to tell me, please do.”

“He killed that man, the one that was found by the Old Edogawa.” Yukawa took a deep breath. “Ishigami was the killer. Not you, or your daughter. He’s not turning himself in for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s guilty of murder.”

Yasuko gaped, not comprehending what she was hearing.

“However,” Yukawa added, “that body did not belong to Shinji Togashi. That was not your ex-husband. He was a complete stranger made to appear to be your ex-husband.”

Yasuko knitted her brow in disbelief, but when she saw the physicist’s eyes blinking with sorrow, the tears gathering on the lenses of his glasses, suddenly she understood. She gasped, darting a hand to her mouth, almost yelling in surprise. The blood drained from her face.

“Looks like you finally understand what I’m trying to tell you,” Yukawa said softly. “Yes. In order to protect you, Ishigami committed murder—on March 10. The day after Shinji Togashi was killed.”

Yasuko felt her head spinning. She swayed dizzily, struggling to remain upright on the bench. Her hands and legs had gone cold; her skin prickled as if with a thousand thorns.

Even from a distance, it was clear to Kusanagi that Yukawa had told the woman the truth. Her face had gone completely pale.
Unsurprising,
Kusanagi thought. He didn’t know anyone who wouldn’t be shocked by the story, least of all someone so directly involved.

Kusanagi still didn’t entirely believe it himself. He had practically scoffed when Yukawa had told him his theory on the way there. Not that he could imagine why his friend would joke about such things—it just seemed like such an unrealistic story.

“That’s impossible,” Kusanagi had said. “He killed someone else to cover up Yasuko Hanaoka’s crime? Who would do something so stupid? And for that matter, who did he kill?”

Yukawa had looked even sadder at that question and had shaken his head. “I don’t know what his name was. But I know where he was from.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There are people in this world who could disappear overnight and no one would bother looking for them, or worry where they had gone. I’ll bet no one even filed a missing persons report. Whoever it was most likely had no contact with their family anymore, if their family is even alive.” Yukawa had pointed back along the riverbank down the path where they had just been walking. “You saw them back there.”

Kusanagi hadn’t understood what Yukawa was saying at first. But as he looked back down the riverbank, a light had flashed on in his head. “The homeless!”

Yukawa hadn’t nodded. He had only said, “Did you notice the fellow collecting those empty cans? He knows everything about the people living in his community. I talked to him the other day, and he told me there was this guy who had joined them only a month before. Not a friend, just someone who had chosen to live there with them. He hadn’t built a shack of his own yet, and still had an aversion to sleeping on cardboard. The Can Man told me that everyone was like that at first—it’s hard to give up your pride—but in the end, they all broke. Anyhow, this new arrival disappeared one day, without so much as a word of parting. The Can Man wondered what had happened to him, but that was all. Some of the other people living there must’ve noticed, too, but no one talked about it. It’s not unusual in their world for people to just go missing like that.

“Incidentally,” Yukawa had continued, “this man disappeared on or around March 10. He was about fifty years old. He’d put on a little weight, but was otherwise of average build.”

The body on the Old Edogawa had been found on March 11.

“I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but Ishigami must have learned of Yasuko Hanaoka’s crime, and he’d decided to help her conceal it. He realized that it wouldn’t be enough to simply dispose of the body. If the police should find and identify it, they would inevitably come knocking on her door. And once the questioning started, he wasn’t sure how long she and her daughter could continue pretending they didn’t know anything about it. So, he decided on a different plan: he would kill someone else and then make the corpse look like Shinji Togashi. Then he would slowly reveal to the police when and how the victim had been slain. The more the investigation progressed, the less suspicion would fall on Yasuko Hanaoka. Why should it? She didn’t kill that man by the river. That wasn’t evidence of the murder of Shinji Togashi. You were on an entirely separate case and you didn’t even know it.”

It had been hard to believe that the story Yukawa was telling him could be true. Kusanagi had shaken his head the whole time he was listening to it.

“I think the solution only occurred to Ishigami because he often walked along the river here. He’d had plenty of time to consider the homeless who lived there and their lives. Why were they living at all? Were they just killing time, waiting there for the day when they would eventually die? When they died, would anyone notice? Would anyone care? That’s what I imagine him thinking.”

“So because of that he thought it would be all right to kill one of them?” Kusanagi had asked.

“Certainly not ‘all right.’ But when he was putting his plan together, I’m certain he wouldn’t have forgotten them or their particular circumstances. Remember what I told you. He’s a man capable of doing anything as long as it makes logical sense.”

“And murder is logical?”

“A murdered body was the piece he needed to complete his puzzle.”

The story was, frankly, unbelievable. And hearing Yukawa deliver it, almost as if he was giving a lecture to his students, had made Kusanagi wonder about his friend.

“On the morning after Yasuko Hanaoka killed Shinji Togashi, Ishigami made contact with a homeless man. I’m not sure exactly what transpired between them, but it’s pretty safe to say he offered the man a job. His job description was to first go to the room Shinji Togashi had been renting and hang out there until evening. Ishigami had spent the night before removing all traces of Shinji Togashi’s presence from the room. The only fingerprints and hair that would be left in the room would belong to the homeless man. That night, the man was to go to a place indicated by Ishigami, wearing clothes he had given him.”

“Shinozaki Station?” Kusanagi had asked, but Yukawa had shaken his head.

“No. Probably the stop before that. Mizue.”

“Why Mizue?”

“Ishigami stole a bicycle from Shinozaki station and went to meet the man at Mizue Station. It’s highly likely that Ishigami had left another bicycle there for himself. The two of them rode together to the banks along the Old Edogawa River, where Ishigami killed the man. He smashed his face to hide the fact that he wasn’t Shinji Togashi. Technically, he didn’t have to burn off the man’s fingerprints, because he had already planted them in Togashi’s rented room, which would have led the police to believe that it was Togashi’s body anyway. Yet if he had crushed the man’s face and not removed his fingerprints, leaving the job half done as it were, it would have raised suspicion. His hand was forced by his fear that it might take too long for the police to discover the body’s identity. Which is why he left fingerprints on the bicycle. For the same reason he left the man’s clothes only half burned.”

“But I don’t see the reason why he had to steal a new bicycle for all that.”

“Ishigami stole a new bicycle to hedge his bets.”

“What bets?”

“Ishigami needed to make sure that the police correctly ascertained the time of the homeless man’s murder. He knew the autopsy would reveal a relatively accurate time of death, but he was afraid the body might not get discovered in time, which would make an accurate time of death much harder to determine. If the span of the possible time of death extended to the evening of the day before, in other words, the evening of March 9, that would be very bad for his plan because
that
was the evening when Togashi actually was killed. Neither Yasuko Hanaoka nor her daughter had an alibi for then. To prevent that from happening, he needed proof that the bicycle had been stolen on or after the tenth. Which is why he chose the one he did—a bicycle that most likely had been left there for less than a day, so the owner would be able to determine roughly when it had been stolen.”

“So the bike came in handy in more than one way for him,” Kusanagi said, smacking himself on the forehead with his own fist.

“I heard that when the bicycle was found both tires were flat. Ishigami did that to prevent someone else from riding off with it. He did everything he could to make sure the Hanaoka’s alibi would stand.”

“But why provide them with such a weak alibi, then? We still haven’t found decisive evidence that they really were at that movie theater.”

“Yet you haven’t been able to find evidence they weren’t there either, have you?” Yukawa had pointed out. “A weak alibi that nevertheless stands up under pressure. That was the trap he laid for you, don’t you see? If he had given them an ironclad alibi, the police would have had to point their suspicions elsewhere. They might even suspect a bait and switch. Someone
might
even get the bright idea that the victim they’d found wasn’t really Shinji Togashi. Ishigami was afraid of that, so he made everything point to Yasuko Hanaoka as the killer, and Shinji Togashi as the victim. Once the police took the bait, they were hooked.”

Kusanagi had groaned. It was just as Yukawa had said. Once they’d determined that the body was likely Shinji Togashi’s, they started to suspect Yasuko. Why? Because her alibi was flimsy. So they continued suspecting her, which meant they’d never suspected that the body wasn’t that of her ex-husband.

“What a frightening man,” Kusanagi had whispered. And Yukawa had agreed. “It was something you said that led me to the true nature of his scheme, actually.”