“What information?”
“Information about this man,” Ishigami explained, looking down at the corpse. “About his life. I need to know his full name, address, age, occupation. The reason he came here. Where he was planning to go afterward. Does he have family? Please tell me all that you know.”
“Well, I—”
“No, actually,” Ishigami cut her off, “before that, let’s move the body. We should clean up this room as quickly as possible. I’m sure there are mountains of evidence here as it is now.” Before he had even finished talking, Ishigami set about lifting the head and torso of the corpse.
“Move it? To where?”
“To my place,” Ishigami said, with a look that indicated this was the obvious choice; and he hoisted the body over his shoulder. He was surprisingly strong. Yasuko noticed the words Judo club embroidered in white thread on his navy windbreaker. Stepping out the door, Ishigami quickly made his way into the neighboring apartment, with Yasuko and Misato anxiously following. The teacher’s apartment was a mess, with piles of mathematic books and journals scattered about the front room. Still carrying the body, Ishigami kicked a few piles aside to clear a space on the tatami mats. Then he casually lowered his burden to the floor. The body fell in a heap, and the dead man’s eyes, frozen open, stared into the room.
Ishigami turned back to the mother and daughter, who stood at the open apartment door. “Ms. Hanaoka, I want you to stay here. Your daughter should go next door and start cleaning. Use the vacuum, and get it as clean as possible.”
Misato nodded, her face pale, and after a quick glance at her mother she vanished from the entryway.
“Close the door,” Ishigami said to Yasuko.
“Oh … okay.” Yasuko did as she was told, then stood in hesitation.
“You might as well come in. It’s not as clean as your place, I’m afraid.”
Ishigami pulled a small cushion off a chair and placed it on the floor next to the body. Yasuko stepped into the room, but she did not sit on the cushion. Instead, she sat with her back against one wall, turning her face away from the body. Ishigami belatedly realized she was afraid of it.
“Er, sorry about that.” He picked up the cushion and offered it to her. “Please, use this.”
“No, it’s all right,” she said, looking down, with a light shake of her head.
Ishigami returned the cushion to the chair and then sat next to the body.
A reddish-black welt had risen around the corpse’s neck.
“The electrical cord, was it?”
“What?”
“When you strangled him. You used an electrical cord?”
“Yes—that’s right. The kotatsu cord.”
“Of course, the kotatsu,” Ishigami said, recalling the pattern of the kotatsu quilt. “You might consider getting rid of that. Actually, never mind, I’ll handle that myself later. Incidentally—” Ishigami looked back to the corpse. “Had you planned on meeting him today?”
Yasuko shook her head. “No, not at all. He just walked into the shop around noon, unexpectedly. Then in the evening, I met him at a family restaurant nearby. It was the only way I could get him to leave the shop. After that, I thought I’d gotten away from him. Then he showed up at my apartment.”
“A family restaurant, huh?”
That rules out the possibility of there being no witnesses, Ishigami thought. He put his hand into the corpse’s jacket pocket. A rolled-up ten-thousand-yen bill came out, then another.
“That’s the money I—”
“You gave him this?”
She nodded, and Ishigami offered her the money. Yasuko didn’t reach for it.
Ishigami went to where his suit hung on the wall nearby and pulled his wallet from the pocket. Removing twenty thousand yen he replaced it with the bills from the dead man’s jacket.
“I can appreciate why you wouldn’t want his,” Ishigami said, handing the money he had taken from his own wallet to Yasuko.
She made a show of hesitating for moment, then took the money with a quiet “Thank you.”
“Well then,” Ishigami said, searching the corpse’s pockets again. He found Togashi’s wallet. There was a little money inside, a driver’s license, and a few receipts.
“Shinji Togashi … West Shinjuku, Shinjuku Ward. Do you think that’s where he was living now?” he asked Yasuko, after looking at the license.
She frowned and shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I know he lived in Nishi-Shinjuku a while back, but he said something—it sounded like he’d gotten thrown out because he couldn’t pay the rent.”
“It looks like the driver’s license was renewed a year ago, which means he must have kept the papers for his old location while finding another place to actually live.”
“I’m pretty sure he moved around a lot. He didn’t have a steady job, so he wouldn’t have been able to rent anything long-term.”
“That would seem to be the case,” Ishigami remarked, his eyes falling on one of the receipts.
It read “Rental Room Ogiya.” The price had been ¥5,880 for two nights, paid up front, it seemed. Ishigami calculated the tax in his head and came up with a price of ¥2,800 per night.
He showed the receipts to Yasuko. “I think this is where he was staying now. And if he doesn’t check out, someone there will empty out his room. If he left anything behind, they might wonder, and call the police. Of course, they might not want the trouble and just do nothing at all. They probably have people skip out on them all the time, which is why they make them pay up front. Still, it’s unwise to be too optimistic.”
Ishigami resumed searching the corpse’s pockets. He found the key. There was a round tag on it with the number 305.
In a daze, Yasuko looked at the key. She looked like she didn’t have the faintest idea what she should do.
The muffled sound of a vacuum cleaner bumping against the walls came from next door. Misato was in there, cleaning every nook and cranny with the desperation of someone who doesn’t know what she should do, and so pours everything into doing what little she can.
I have to protect them, thought Ishigami. He would never be this close to so beautiful a woman ever again in his life. He was sure of that. He had to summon every last bit of his strength and knowledge to prevent any calamity from happening to her.
Ishigami looked at the face of the dead man. Whatever expression he’d been wearing had already faded. He looked more like a lump of clay than a person. Still, it was possible to see that this man had been a real looker in his youth. Though he had clearly gained a little bit of weight in recent years, his was the kind of face women found easy to like.
And Yasuko fell in love with him. When Ishigami thought this, it was like a little bubble popped inside him and envy spread through his chest. He shook his head, embarrassed at his own capacity to have such feelings at a time like this.
“Is there anyone he kept in contact with, anyone close that you know of?” Ishigami resumed his questions.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for years.”
“Did you hear what he was planning to do tomorrow? Did he say if he was going to meet anyone?”
“No,” Yasuko said, her head sagging. “He didn’t tell me anything like that. I’m sorry. I know I’m not much help.”
“No, I just had to ask. Of course you wouldn’t know any of those things. Please don’t worry about it.” Ishigami reached out with a gloved hand and pushed open the dead man’s lips, looking inside his mouth. He could see a gold crown on one of the molars. “He’ll have dental records, then.”
“He went to the dentist regularly when we were married.”
“How long ago was that?”
“We were divorced five years ago.”
“Five years?” That was too recent for any reasonable hope that they had thrown out his charts. “Does he have a criminal record?”
“I don’t think so. Of course, I don’t know what he’s been doing since we bro
ke up.”
“So it’s a possibility, then.”
“I suppose…”
Even if the man hadn’t committed any major crimes, he could easily have been fingerprinted for some minor traffic violation. Ishigami didn’t know whether police forensics bothered comparing fingerprints with traffic records, but it wouldn’t hurt to consider the possibility.
So, no matter how they disposed of the body, its identity would eventually come to light if it was found. They would have to resign themselves to that. Still, they needed time. Leaving fingerprints or teeth behind could hurt their chances.
Yasuko sighed. To Ishigami it sounded sexual, almost like a moan, and his heart fluttered. I won’t let you down, he thought, steeling his resolve anew.
The situation wasn’t easy, for sure. Once they discovered the identity of the body, the police would almost surely come calling on Yasuko. Ishigami wasn’t sure she or her daughter would be able to withstand tough questioning from the city detectives. Preparing a weak cover story wouldn’t be enough. As soon as the detectives found an inconsistency, the whole thing would fall apart, and the Hanaokas would likely just blurt out the truth.
What they needed was a perfect defense based on perfect logic.
Whatever you do, don’t panic, he told himself. Panicking wouldn’t help them reach a solution. And he was sure their problem had a solution. Every problem had one.
Ishigami closed his eyes. It was a habit he had developed when confronting particularly ornery mathematical challenges—all he had to do was shut out all information from the outside world, and the formulas would begin to take shape. Except this time, it wasn’t formulas that filled his head.
After a time, he opened his eyes. First, he looked at the alarm clock sitting on the table. It was eight thirty. Next he looked at Yasuko. She swallowed and drew back.
“Help me undress him.”
Yasuko blinked. “What?”
“We have to take off his clothes. Not just his jacket, but his sweater and pants, too. And we’d better do it quick, before rigor mortis sets in.” Ishigami reached for the man’s jacket while he talked.
“Yes, right,” Yasuko said. She leaned forward to help, but her fingers trembled with revulsion.
Ishigami paused. “Actually, never mind. I’ll do this. You go help your daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” Yasuko said, nodding, then stood slowly.
“Ms. Hanaoka,” Ishigami called to her turned back. She looked around. “You’ll need an alibi.”
“An alibi? But I don’t have an alibi.”
“That’s why we have to create one,” Ishigami said. He drew on the jacket he had just taken from the body. “Trust me. Logical thinking will get us through this.”
THREE
“If this is what you call ‘logical thinking,’ I’d enjoy analyzing your brain functions one of these days.”
Manabu Yukawa, his cheek propped up on one hand, gave an exaggerated yawn. He’d taken off his smallish wire-frame glasses some time ago and set them aside, as if to say, I won’t be needing these.
Which was probably true. Kusanagi had been sitting across from him, staring at the chessboard, for over twenty minutes now, unable to think of a way to break out of his predicament. There was nowhere for his king to run; he couldn’t even play the cornered rat and take out a piece or two of his opponent’s on his way down. He had considered every possible move by now, and each led straight to certain defeat.
“You know, chess really isn’t my kind of game,” Kusanagi muttered.
Yukawa rolled his eyes. “Here he goes again.”
“First of all, what’s all this about taking your opponent’s pieces and not being able to use them? They’re the spoils of war! Why can’t I add them to my army?”
“Don’t go blaming the rules of the game. Besides, the fact of the matter is your opponent’s pieces aren’t spoils, they’re soldiers. When you take them off the board, you’re killing them. Not much use for dead soldiers.”
“But you can use them in shogi!”
“Well, credit the man who thought up shogi for being so flexible. I suppose that when you capture pieces in shogi you’re making them surrender, not killing them. That’s why you get to use them again.”
“Chess should be the same way.”
“I don’t think going turncoat sits well with the spirit of knighthood. Look, stop making lame excuses, and look at the situation logically. You can only move one piece on your turn. And you have only a few pieces that actually can move, and none of those moves will do the slightest thing to stop me. Whatever you do, on my next move I will advance my knight, and—checkmate.”
“I give up.” Kusanagi slumped in his chair. “Chess is boring.”
“With you, yes.” Yukawa glanced at the clock on the wall. “Forty-two minutes. And most of that was you thinking. I wonder how it is that a man such as yourself has so much time to waste here. Won’t that hardheaded supervisor of yours chew you out?”
“Nah, I just cleaned up this stalker murder case. Gotta take it easy a bit sometimes.” Kusanagi reached for his dark-stained mug. The instant coffee Yukawa had offered him when he arrived had gone completely cold.
At the moment, Yukawa and Kusanagi were the only ones in Lab 13 of the Imperial University physics department. The students had all stepped out for classes, which was precisely why Kusanagi had chosen this time to drop in.
Kusanagi’s cell phone rang in his pocket. Yukawa put on his white lab coat and grinned. “See, they’re onto you already.”
Kusanagi frowned as he looked at the incoming call display. It seemed Yukawa was right. The call was from a junior detective in his department.
* * *
The crime scene was on the Tokyo side of the Old Edogawa River, not far from a sewage treatment facility. Just across the water, on the river’s other bank, was Chiba Prefecture. Why couldn’t they have dumped it on the other side? Kusanagi wondered as he lifted up the collar of his coat against the cold.
The body had been left on the side of the sloping embankment, wrapped in a blue plastic tarp of the kind often used in factory yards.
An elderly man out for a jog along the river had called it in. He’d seen something that looked like a foot protruding from the tarp and had lifted the plastic for a peek.
“How old was the guy who found it, seventy-five? He sure picked a frigid day to go for a run. Poor guy probably didn’t expect to see something like this around here. My heart goes out to him.”
The junior detective, Kishitani, had arrived at the scene first; he’d explained the circumstances to Kusanagi. Now the older man frowned. The trailing edge of his long coat fluttered in the wind.
“So, Kishi, you see the body?”
“I did,” Kishitani said with a grimace. “The chief wanted me to take a good long look at it.”
“That’s because he doesn’t want to look at it himself.”
“You want to peek, Kusanagi?”
“Nope. I’ll take your word for it on this one.”
According to Kishitani’s report, the body had been left in a sorry state. It had been stripped of clothes, shoes, even socks. The face had been smashed—like a split melon, the young detective had said, which was more than enough to make Kusanagi queasy. The fingers had been burned, too, completely destroying any fingerprints.
The corpse was male. Marks around the neck indicated he had been strangled. There were no other wounds apparent on the rest of the body.
“I hope forensics finds something,” Kusanagi said, pacing in a circle. With people watching, he thought it best to make a show of looking for clues—some lucky hint, something that might have belonged to the killer. The truth of the matter was that he left most of the crime-scene examination to the specialists. He was unlikely to find anything of much importance himself.
“There was a bicycle nearby. Some people from the local station in Edogawa already came to pick it up.”
“A bicycle? Probably trash somebody th
rew out.”
“It was a little new for that. And both of the tires were flat. Someone put a hole in them with a nail or something.”
“Hmph. The victim’s, then?”
“Hard to say. It had a registration number on it, so we might be able to find out who owned it.”
“Well, I hope it was the victim’s,” Kusanagi said. “Or else this is going to be a real tricky one. Heaven or hell.”
“How’s that?”
“This your first John Doe, Kishi?”
Kishitani nodded.
“Think about it. The face and fingerprints were destroyed, which means that the killer didn’t want anyone to know who the victim was. Of course, that also means, if we find out who the victim was, it should be easy to identify the killer. The question is how long it’ll take us to figure out the poor bastard’s identity. That right there’s what determines our fate.”
Just then, Kishitani’s cell phone rang. He took the call, talked briefly, then turned to Kusanagi. “They want us down at the Edogawa station.”
“Well, then, things are looking up,” Kusanagi said. He stretched and straightened, massaging his lower back with clenched fists.
* * *
When they reached the Edogawa police station, Mamiya was standing by the heater, warming his hands. Mamiya was their division chief in criminal affairs. Several men—probably local homicide—were scurrying around him, prepping the room to serve as investigation headquarters.
“You come in your own car today?” Mamiya asked when he saw Kusanagi walk in.
“Sure did. Train station’s too far away.”
“You familiar with this part of town, then?”
“I wouldn’t say familiar, but I’ve been here a few times.”
“So you don’t need a guide. Good. Take Kishitani with you and go—here.” He held out a piece of paper.
It was a memo with an address in Shinozaki, Edogawa Ward, beneath which was written a woman’s name: Yoko Yamabe.
“Who’s this?” Kusanagi asked.
“You tell him about the bicycle?” Mamiya asked Kishitani.
“Yes, sir.”