The Devotion Of Suspect X (4 page)

She wondered if there was some way she could make it look like she had killed him by herself, but she soon discarded the idea. If she tried anything of the sort, they’d see right through her amateurish efforts.

I have to protect Misato.
The girl had had it so tough, growing up with a mother like her. Yasuko would gladly give her own life if it meant Misato would not have to suffer anymore.

So what should I do? Is there anything I
can
do?

A curious sound shook Yasuko out of her thoughts. Gradually, she realized it was the phone, ringing as Misato clutched it. Misato’s eyes went wide and she looked at her mother.

Yasuko quietly extended her hand. Misato bit her lip, then slowly handed over the phone.

Yasuko steadied her breath, then lifted the receiver to her ear and pressed the talk button. “Yes? Hello? Hanaoka speaking.”

“Um, hi. It’s Ishigami, from next door.”

Yasuko stared stupidly at the phone.
It’s that teacher again. What could he possibly want this time?
“Yes? Can I help you?”

“Erm, well, actually, I was wondering what you were going to do.”

Yasuko had no idea what he meant. “I’m sorry, about what?”

“Just, well—”
Ishigami paused before continuing.
“If you were going to call the police, well that’s fine, I’ll say nothing about it. But if you weren’t, then I was thinking there might be something I could do to help.”

“What?” Yasuko’s mouth hung open. What the hell was he saying?

“How about I come over there now,”
Ishigami said, his voice hushed over the phone.
“Would that be okay?”

“What? No, I don’t think—no, that would not be okay.” Yasuko stammered, her body breaking out in a cold sweat.

“Ms. Hanaoka,”
Ishigami went on.
“It’s very difficult to dispose of a body. A woman can’t do it by herself.”

Yasuko was speechless.

He must have overheard. He must’ve been able to hear her talking with Misato. Maybe he had been listening to everything—her argument with Togashi, the struggle, everything.

It’s over,
she thought, lowering her head. There was no escape now. She would have to turn herself in. She would just have to try to make sure that Misato’s involvement never came to light.

“Ms. Hanaoka, are you listening to me?”

“Um, yes. I’m listening.”

“Can I come over then?”

“But I just told you—” Yasuko stopped and looked at her daughter. Misato stared back at her, fear and confusion on her face.
She must really be wondering who I’m talking to.

If Ishigami had been listening to everything from the neighboring apartment, then he knew Misato was involved in the murder. And if he were to tell the police what he knew …

Yasuko swallowed. “Right. Okay. There is something I wanted to ask your help with anyway. Please do come over.”

“Be right there,”
came Ishigami’s reply.

“Who was it?” Misato asked as soon as Yasuko had hung up.

“The teacher from next door. Mr. Ishigami.”

“Why? How did he—”

“I’ll explain later. You go to your room, and close the door. Quickly!”

Still looking confused, Misato went into the back room again. At almost the same instant that the girl shut her door, Yasuko heard Ishigami step out of his apartment.

A few moments later, the doorbell rang. Yasuko went to the entryway, unlocked the door, and removed the chain.

Ishigami was waiting there with a curious expression on his face. For some reason, he had put on a dark navy jacket.
He wasn’t wearing that a moment ago.

“Come in.”

Ishigami nodded and stepped inside.

While Yasuko locked the door behind him, the teacher stepped into the room and without the slightest hesitation pulled back the cover on the kotatsu. He went down on one knee to get a closer look at Togashi’s corpse. From his expression he seemed to be deep in thought. For the first time, Yasuko noticed that he was wearing gloves.

Hesitantly, Yasuko joined him where he knelt. All the life had drained from Togashi’s face. Spittle, or something else—it was hard to say—had run down from his lips and dried on his skin.

“You heard us, didn’t you?” Yasuko asked.

“Heard? Heard what?”

“Through the wall. You could hear us. That’s why you called.”

Ishigami turned to Yasuko, his face blank. “I couldn’t hear you talking, if that’s what you mean. For all its faults, this building’s quite soundproof. That was one of the reasons why I moved here, actually.”

“Then how did you—”

“Realize what happened?”

Yasuko nodded.

Ishigami pointed to a corner of the room. An empty can lay there on its side. Some ash had spilled from it onto the floor.

“When I knocked on your door a few minutes ago, I smelled cigarette smoke. Figuring you had a guest, I looked for shoes by the door, but I couldn’t see any. I glanced into the room, and noticed it looked like someone was under your kotatsu, and the cord was pulled. But if someone wanted to hide, they could’ve just gone into the back room. Which meant that the person under the kotatsu wasn’t hiding there, they
had been hidden there
. When I put that together with the thumping noises I’d heard, and the fact that your hair was unusually disheveled, it wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened. Oh, and one more thing: there aren’t any cockroaches in this building. I’ve lived here several years now and never seen one.”

Yasuko stared at Ishigami’s mouth as he talked. His voice was calm, never rising, his expression never changing.
I’ll bet that’s exactly how he talks when he’s giving a lesson to his students,
thought Yasuko, her mind wandering nervously.

Then she realized she was staring at him, and she averted her eyes. She felt that he had been watching her, too.

He’s terribly levelheaded, and smart,
she thought. How else could he have accurately reconstructed such an elaborate scenario after only a glance through her front door? At the same time, Yasuko felt relieved. If he hadn’t heard her conversations, he didn’t know the details of what had happened.

“He was my ex-husband,” she said. “We’ve been divorced for several years, but he kept coming around. He wouldn’t leave unless I gave him money … that’s what he came for today, too. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I guess I just snapped…” Yasuko lowered her eyes. She wasn’t going to tell him everything that had happened. She had to keep Misato’s involvement out of this.

“Are you going to turn yourself in?”

“I think that’s the only way. I hate to do this to Misato, though. She doesn’t deserve this.” She would have said more, but she heard the sliding door of the back room fly open. Misato, furious, stepped into the room.

“No, Mom, you can’t! I won’t let you.”

“Misato, be quiet!”

“I won’t. I said I won’t. Listen, Mr. Ishigami? I’ll tell you who killed that man—”

“Misato!” Yasuko raised her voice.

Misato’s mouth snapped shut and she glared daggers at her mother. Her eyes were completely red.

“Ms. Hanaoka,” Ishigami said evenly, “you don’t have to hide it from me.”

“I’m not hiding anything—”

“I know you didn’t kill him by yourself. Your daughter must have helped you.”

Yasuko shook her head. “No, that’s not true. I did do it myself. She only just came home—she came home right after I killed him. She had nothing to do with it.”

It was clear Ishigami wasn’t believing a thing she said. He sighed and looked at Misato. “I think hiding it is only making it harder on your daughter.”

“I’m not lying. You have to believe me!” Yasuko laid her hand on Ishigami’s knee.

Ishigami stared at her hand for a moment, then looked back at the corpse. Then he tilted his head. “What matters is how the police see things. I’m afraid they’ll not be fooled so easily.”

“Why not?” Yasuko asked, before realizing that she had as good as admitted her lie.

Ishigami pointed to the corpse’s right hand. “There’s bruising on the wrist and the back of his hand. I think I can even make out finger marks. I’m guessing he was strangled from behind, and naturally tried to protect his throat. These marks came from someone stopping him from doing so. The evidence is plain to see.”

“It was me,” Yasuko insisted. “I did that, too.”

“Ms. Hanaoka, that’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“You strangled him from behind, right? How could you pull his hands forward at the same time? It’s impossible. You’d need four arms.”

Yasuko had nothing more to say. She felt trapped in a tunnel from which there was no exit. She lowered her head, her shoulders sagging. If Ishigami could tell all this with just a glance, the police would surely see even more.

“I just don’t want to get Misato involved. I have to help her…”

“I don’t want you to go to prison, either, Mom,” Misato said, her voice choked with tears.

Yasuko covered her face with her hands. “I just don’t know what to do.”

She felt the air growing heavier around her. It felt like she would be crushed where she sat.

“Mister,” Misato spoke. “You came here to tell Mom she should turn herself in, right?”

There was a beat before Ishigami replied. “I called thinking I could help you and your mother in some way. If you want to turn yourselves in, that’s fine, I won’t argue with you. But, if you weren’t going to turn yourselves in, I thought it might be hard managing with just the two of you.”

Yasuko let her hands fall away from her face. She remembered something odd Ishigami had said over the phone. How a woman couldn’t dispose of a body by herself—

“Is there some way we
don’t
have to turn ourselves in?” Misato asked.

Yasuko looked up. Ishigami tilted his head, thinking. His face betrayed no emotion.

“It seems to me that you have two options: hide the fact that anything happened, or hide the fact that you had anything to do with it. Either way, you have to get rid of the body.”

“Can we?”

“Misato,” Yasuko said sternly. “We’re not doing anything of the sort.”

“Please, Mom.” She turned back to Ishigami. “You really think we can?”

“It will be difficult, but not impossible,” Ishigami replied, his voice calmly mechanical. To Yasuko, this lack of emotion made everything he said sound somehow more logical than her own rattled thoughts.

“Mom,” Misato was saying, “let’s let him help us. It’s the only way!”

“But I couldn’t—” Yasuko looked at Ishigami.

His narrow eyes were fixed on the floor. He was waiting for them to decide.

Yasuko remembered what Sayoko had told her, that the math teacher had a crush on her. That he only came to buy lunch at the shop when she was there.

Now she was glad Sayoko had said so, or she would have seriously doubted Ishigami’s sanity. Why else would someone go so far out of his way to help a neighbor to whom he had barely even spoken? He had already risked arrest just by coming into the room.

“Wouldn’t somebody find the body? If we hid it, that is,” Yasuko asked.

“We haven’t decided whether we will hide the body yet or not,” Ishigami replied. “Sometimes it’s best not to conceal anything. We’ll decide what to do with the body once we have all the information at hand. The only thing we know now for certain is that we can’t leave him lying here like this.”

“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?”