Malice

9 TRUTH ^{KYOICHIRO KAGA’S SOLUTION}

How are you feeling? I spoke to the doctor before coming in here, and he tells me you’ve decided to go through with the surgery. I was relieved to hear that. You’ve signed all the permission forms and they’re ready to go ahead. So there’s no turning back now. Apparently, there’s a fairly high chance of success, too. I’m not telling you that to make you feel better. It’s the truth.

“I want to ask you, when did you first realize you were sick? Was it this winter? This year?

“No, I’m guessing you knew the cancer had returned by the end of last year at the latest. And you thought this time might be the last go-around. That there would be no remissions or second chances. Am I right? That’s why you didn’t bother going to the hospital?

“I have a reason for believing this. I think that’s when you started planning Kunihiko Hidaka’s murder.

“Surprised? You shouldn’t be. There’s a logical basis for my assertion. I even have evidence. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon. I might be here a little longer than usual today, but don’t worry, your doctor has given me permission.

“Take a look at this. Recognize this image? It’s from the video of you sneaking into Hidaka’s house. The one Hidaka supposedly made by setting up a hidden camera in his garden, catching you in the act. According to your confession, that is.

“If you’d like, I can bring a player in here and we can review the whole video, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. This one frame will be enough. Besides, you’re probably sick of seeing that footage, right? After all, you staged it, you performed it, and you filmed it. It was your directorial and acting debut.

“Yes, I am claiming it’s a fake. Everything on this tape is a lie. That’s what I’m going to prove to you now, using this photograph. See, this video wasn’t filmed seven years ago, like the date in the bottom purports.

“Let me explain. It’s very simple. We can see Hidaka’s garden here, right? Notice the plants. I realize there aren’t many in this image. The famous cherry tree is just outside the frame, and the lawn is withered. You can tell at a glance that this was taken during the winter. Not that winter. Just a winter. That, and since it was taken in the middle of the night, it’s too dark to make out much detail. I suppose that’s why you thought it would fool us.

“Mr. Nonoguchi, unfortunately you made a big mistake. No, I’m not bluffing, you really did make a mistake. See this blotch across the lawn here? That’s the shadow of the cherry tree, cast by a streetlamp out at the road. It’s faint, yes, but it’s fatal to your subterfuge.

“I know, I know. The quality of the video and the way the light shines into the garden make it hard to determine whether this is the cherry tree of seven years or only half a year ago. On that account, you’re perfectly correct. But that’s not what I wanted to point out. The problem here isn’t the shape of the shadow, it’s that there’s only one tree.

“You seem confused, so let me explain. If this video really was taken in the Hidakas’ garden seven years ago, there would have to be two shadows across the lawn here. Do you know why? Because seven years ago, there were two cherry trees in the Hidakas’ garden standing side by side. A lovely couple.

“So, no, the video wasn’t recorded years ago. It was taken recently, and it was taken by you. Rie Hidaka seems to think it wouldn’t have been difficult for you to stage your video shoot toward the end of last year. Kunihiko Hidaka was still single at the time, she hadn’t yet moved into the house, and all you would’ve had to do was wait for a night when he was out drinking with one of his editors.

“Of course, you’d need a key to the house to make sure the office window was unlocked. It wouldn’t have made such a great video if you weren’t able to climb in the window for your big ‘murder attempt.’ Oh, I know you didn’t have a set of keys to Hidaka’s house. Rie didn’t think that would’ve been problematic, either, though. When her late husband went out drinking, he never took his keys with him. Ever since he lost his keys once while out on the town, he’d taken to hiding them behind the flower pot outside the front door. As long as you knew that, you wouldn’t need your own set of keys. Rie is fairly sure that was something you did know.

“I can guess what you’re thinking, Mr. Nonoguchi. What detective analyzes every little shadow in a videotape on the off chance something might not correspond to the vegetation present seven years ago in a garden? Well, you’re right. No one does that, not even me. See, it wasn’t the lack of an extra tree that made me realize the videotape was a fake. Rather, it was because I knew the tape was a fake that I watched it over and over again, going so far as to hunt down the one or two extant photos of the Hidakas’ garden in order to find the evidence I needed. But how did I know it was a fake? Because another piece of evidence from your confession was called into question: namely, the giant pile of manuscripts found in your apartment. The ones I was sure were connected to your motive for murdering Hidaka.

“There were several things that struck me as odd when I read the confession you wrote following your arrest. It was possible to explain each away individually, but taken together, they gave me the impression there was something else at work in your account, Mr. Nonoguchi. There was an insincerity running through it that made me unable to simply accept what you’d written as the truth.

“That was when I found my first big clue. I was amazed that, given the number of times I’d met with you, I hadn’t noticed it before. It was staring me in the face the whole time.

“Mr. Nonoguchi, please hold out your right hand. Just your fingers will do. Note the pen callus on your middle finger. It’s quite thick.

“But that’s odd, isn’t it? You don’t write longhand, you use a word processor for your stories. You also used it for your reports and so forth you wrote back when you worked as a teacher. So why did you have such a large pen callus? Perhaps you’d like me to believe it’s not a pen callus. Then what is it? You don’t know? You can’t remember anything that could have caused that bump on your finger?

“Don’t worry about it too much. The only thing that’s important here is that, to me, it looked like a pen callus. And the only reason for someone who uses a word processor to have such a nice thick pen callus would be because he’d recently needed to write a very large quantity of material by hand.

“That got me thinking. And let me tell you, what I came up with sent a chill down my spine. If my new theory was correct, it meant that my investigation would take a full one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.

“I’ll cut to the chase: all those manuscripts found in your apartment were not written over the last couple of decades, they weren’t written back in high school or college, but instead they were written very recently, in great haste. Chilling, I know. Because that would mean that Mr. Hidaka hadn’t stolen your work, or stolen any ideas from those manuscripts at all.

“But a theory without proof isn’t enough. I needed some way to prove it, so I did some looking around.

“Mr. Nonoguchi, do you know a man by the name of Heikichi Tsujimura? You don’t? I didn’t think so.

“In your confession, you wrote that as children you and Kunihiko Hidaka used to go watch the neighborhood fireworks maker at work. You said that it was your memory of these occasions that formed the basis for your story A Circle of Fire, the very story on which Mr. Hidaka based his novel An Unburning Flame.

“That fireworks maker’s name was Mr. Tsujimura. Yes, of course you might’ve simply forgotten the name. That’s not important. I imagine that, had I been able to ask Kunihiko Hidaka if he remembered, it’s possible he might’ve forgotten, too.

“But Mr. Tsujimura—who, by the way, is still alive; over ninety and in a wheelchair, but sharp as a tack—hadn’t forgotten the boy who came to visit. One boy, not two. I showed him your middle-school yearbook and he pointed out the boy’s face right away: Kunihiko Hidaka.

“Oh, and when I showed him your face, he said he’d never seen you before.

“It was his testimony that removed my last remaining shred of doubt. Mr. Hidaka hadn’t stolen your work, hadn’t based any of his novels on your writings. All those manuscripts were stories and novels derived by you, closely based on his books. Then I started working backward from that fact, the fact that he didn’t plagiarize a word from you. If there was no plagiarism, then there was no blackmail, and if not blackmail, ultimately, no attempted murder.

“What are we to make, then, of your alleged relationship to Hatsumi Hidaka, the supposed motive for your attempted murder? Was there really an infidelity, as you claimed? Let’s review the evidence.

“First we have the apron, the necklace, and the travel documents found in your apartment. Next we have the photograph, discovered later, of Hatsumi, taken at what appears to be the Fuji River rest area. Not to mention the photo of Mount Fuji taken from the same spot.

“That’s it. There was nothing else. Nor were there any witnesses who could testify to seeing the two of you alone together, much less testify to a relationship between you.

“Of these, the travel documents could have been written up at any time, so they prove nothing. Furthermore, the necklace you claimed was a present for Hatsumi could’ve been for anyone, or no one at all. The apron, however, does appear to have been Hatsumi’s apron. As I told you before, we found a photograph of her wearing it.

“However, it would’ve been a rather simple task for you to steal an apron out of Hidaka’s house, possibly on one of those nights when he was out drinking with an editor or perhaps when you went to help him clean out his deceased wife’s belongings before he married Rie.

“On that same occasion, you could’ve stolen a photograph. Specifically, one that fulfilled the following conditions: it had to show Hatsumi standing alone, and there needed to be no other photographs showing Kunihiko in the same place. Another photograph showing something innocuous, like a view from the same place, would be the icing on the cake. The photograph meeting all of those conditions was the one taken at the Fuji River rest area.

“No, of course I have no proof you stole anything. I’m merely saying it was possible. But, given the number of times I’ve been misled by things you’ve written, the mere possibility is enough to convince me I shouldn’t accept the details of your alleged relationship with Hatsumi at face value.

“Of course, if there was no attempted murder, no blackmail, and no plagiarism, then it would only stand to reason that the precondition necessary for all of those events to take place—Hatsumi’s adultery—also did not occur. This also clears up the matter of Hatsumi’s accidental death. It was simply that: an accident. There was no motive for suicide.

“Let’s take a look at what we have so far—specifically, what you’ve been up to since fall of last year. I’ll try to keep things in chronological order.

“First, you procured some unused, but old—and old-looking—spiral notebooks. I’m sure you were able to find them stashed somewhere in the school where you taught. Then, you began copying Kunihiko Hidaka’s published works. Not exact copies, because you adjusted them to give the impression that these were the originals upon which those published works had been based. I’d guess it took you something on the order of a full month to rewrite each novel. That must’ve been quite a chore. For the newer works, of course, you simply used your word processor. The stories written on composition paper that were without counterparts in Hidaka’s published works were things that you actually did write back in your college days.

“As for The Gates of Ice, this is where we really see the hand of the master planner. Anticipating events, you realized you needed story memos for the detectives to find, and you needed to have written the next installment to use as your alibi when you killed Hidaka.

“Then comes the video. As I said, you probably took this toward the end of last year. Then, in the new year, you obtained Hatsumi’s apron and photograph. No doubt you also filled out those travel forms and bought the necklace around the same time. Did you already have blank travel forms lying around? Maybe you found those at your school, too. Also, you claimed that the paisley necktie in your dresser was from Hatsumi, and the teacup in the cupboard was one you had purchased together. You probably picked up both of these items rather recently and by yourself.

“Next we come to a very important final step. I hear that it took the Hidakas about a week to prepare all of their things to send to Canada, during which time you visited their house once. I believe your main goal for this visit was to conceal two items in their luggage: the knife and the videotape. The tape you placed inside a hollowed-out copy of Hidaka’s book in order to create the impression that it was something he’d been hiding.

“Then you waited until April sixteenth, the day you murdered Kunihiko Hidaka.

“Clearly this wasn’t a momentary loss of control or an act carried out ‘in the heat of the moment.’ It was a terrifyingly premeditated execution, the result of a great deal of planning. While you put an impressive amount of thought and energy into it, this alone doesn’t distinguish your crime from all the other murders. I have to admit, the twist you put on it was genius. Typically, much of the planning that goes into a premeditated murder involves schemes to establish an alibi, avoid arrest, or, at the very least, avoid blame.

“But your plan was unique. You had an entirely different goal in mind. You wanted to get arrested. You didn’t care about committing the perfect crime. You wanted to establish the perfect motive.

“I know. It’s a rather startling idea. You may be the first murderer that decided to fabricate a motive before committing the crime. Believe me, I almost couldn’t bring myself to accept the truth. During the long hours it took me to reach the point where I was confident I’d uncovered the truth, I doubted myself every step of the way. In fact, I refused to believe what the facts were telling me.

“Of course, had we questioned any of the evidence earlier—say, the videotape—then we might well have resolved this much more quickly. Yet who would suspect a killer of forging a vital piece of evidence indicating his own guilt of a crime? Truly, that was a brilliant stroke.

“The same goes for the fake manuscripts you prepared and the clues you planted suggesting that you had had a relationship with Hatsumi Hidaka. If any of those had been evidence that exonerated you, we would have certainly put them under a microscope. Yet we did nothing of the sort because every bit of it seemed to only confirm your motive. It is an unfortunate fact that the police tend to turn a stern eye toward evidence that benefits a suspect, but tend to be rather easygoing when it comes to evidence that implicates our suspect. A tendency you deftly took advantage of.

“You led our investigation down the exact wrong path with a series of carefully laid traps. The first was the notebooks you prepared. The second was the apron, the necklace, the travel documents, and the photograph of Hatsumi Hidaka. Thinking back on it, I suspect you were getting nervous when it took us so long to find that photograph. That’s probably why you felt the need to drop that hint about the ‘important books.’ How relieved you must have been when I took the bait.

“I required a little guidance to fall into the third trap as well. If you hadn’t gone out of your way to ask Rie about the tapes Hidaka sent to Canada, I might never have keyed in to their importance. You must have been so pleased with your idea to hide the tape inside a copy of Sea Ghost—the novel that inspired your false motive in the first place. You even made sure I was aware of that particular novel by recommending it to me the first night we met. That was all part of your plan, too, wasn’t it? I have to say, I’m impressed.

“Now let’s turn back the hands of the clock just a touch further to the day you killed Kunihiko Hidaka.

“The murder was planned quite thoroughly, yet you couldn’t have anyone catching on to that fact. It had to seem like a rash act done out of desperation, in the ‘heat of the moment.’ Anything else would undermine your false motive. A knife or poison wouldn’t work, those would be too obviously premeditated. What about strangulation? Considering your relative physical strengths, that might be difficult for you to accomplish.

“No, your best bet was blunt trauma: striking him with a dull instrument from behind. Once he’d fallen to the floor you could easily strangle him. But you’d still need a suitable murder weapon—one that you could have found at the scene. Hidaka’s paperweight would do the trick nicely. How to strangle him? A telephone cord! I can just picture you checking off each item on your mental checklist.

“Here, however, was a potential problem. The movers having already packed up most of the house, what if the paperweight was no longer there? Unlike the phone cord, the paperweight wasn’t an absolute necessity. It could already be packed in some cardboard box.

“So you prepared a backup: the Dom Pérignon. The bottle was intended as your backup murder weapon, which is why you didn’t offer the gift upon your arrival. If you did, they might store it somewhere out of easy reach. No, first you had to check the office. Relieved to see that the paperweight was still there, you were then free to give them the champagne bottle as a gift to celebrate their big move.

“When I first heard about the champagne, I wondered if it had been poisoned. I even asked the manager of the hotel who ended up with it how it tasted. He said it was quite good. Of course, now I know that you never would’ve used poison in the first place.

“The trick you used to establish your alibi—using the fax software on the computer—was brilliant. Smart enough to fool an older detective—I’m pretty sure the chief still hasn’t figured it out, by the way—and yet flawed enough, with the monitor left on and the wrong redial number on the house phone, that someone was sure to see through it.

“I wonder what you would have done if we hadn’t figured it out, though. What if you were never even a suspect? I see you’re hesitant to respond. Well, don’t worry about it. We did see through your trick, as intended, and you were arrested.

“You look tired. I’m sorry to have talked for so long. But bear with me just a little longer. After all, you put me through quite a lot to reach this point. It seems only fair that you suffer a little yourself.

“Let’s get down to the big question here: Why go through all that trouble to construct a false motive with the express intent of being arrested? It flies in the face of common sense.

“Of course you had a motive, a different motive, for killing Kunihiko Hidaka. And you were more frightened that your true motive would be revealed than you were of being found guilty for the murder of Kunihiko Hidaka.

“As for what that motive was, I know what it is, but I’d really like to hear it from you. Well? Why not tell me? I can’t see that there’s any point in you remaining silent.

“No? Very well. As you seem to have no intention of talking, let me tell you instead.

“Do know what this is, Mr. Nonoguchi? That’s right, a CD. Not for music. It’s a CD-ROM, one Hidaka had burned for himself. It turns out that several years ago, he started keeping all his research materials—photos included—on CD. He scanned his older photos and starting using a digital camera to take the newer ones.

“Why did I think to look through all of Hidaka’s reference photos? It was because, in the course of sorting through the past—his past, and your past—a particular photograph came to my attention. If that photograph showed what I thought it might, then something I hadn’t been paying much attention to would suddenly become extremely important, and several unrelated facts would line up quite nicely.

“It turns out that the original photograph had already been thrown away. But I knew that Mr. Hidaka had had it in his possession and had plenty of time to make a copy. Thus, this CD. Sorry, I know I’m being overly dramatic, building up to this; but there really isn’t any need, is there? You already know what photo I mean. It’s an old Polaroid of Masaya Fujio assaulting a middle-school girl.

“The photograph’s quite clear. I was going to print it out and bring it with me but there really wasn’t any point. You know what I saw in that photograph. It was exactly what I’d anticipated. You were the one holding her down, Mr. Nonoguchi. You helped Masaya Fujio rape that girl.

“I looked into your days in middle school and I heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people. The subject of bullying came up quite a bit. Some said you were a victim. Others said you were one of the bullies yourself. I think both statements are correct. You were bullied and continued to be bullied even when you joined Fujio’s circle. Only the form that the bullying took changed as you went along.

“From your experience as a teacher, you know as well as I do that bullying never ends. As long as the people involved are at the same school, it keeps going on. When a teacher says, ‘There’s no more bullying in my class,’ what they’re really saying is ‘I’d like to believe there’s no more bullying in my class.’

“I realize what happened to that girl left a very deep scar on you. I don’t believe you did what you did willingly, or that you took any joy in it. You simply knew that if you turned against Masaya Fujio, you’d be back in hell. When I think about the guilt you must have felt, the self-loathing, I feel physical pain, Mr. Nonoguchi, and I wasn’t even there. That day was the last time you were bullied, and probably the worst.

“You wanted more than anything to bury that dark memory in the past. You wanted it so much, you were willing to kill for it.

“But wait.

“Why did this secret start bothering you now? Hidaka had obtained the photograph before he wrote Forbidden Hunting Grounds, and there was no sign that he had shown it to anyone afterward. Why couldn’t you assume that your secret was safe with him?

“Please don’t try to tell me that Hidaka was using that photograph to blackmail you. The same lie won’t work twice; and besides, it’s simply beneath the architect of such a masterful crime.

“I suspect Miyako Fujio threw a wrench into everything. She was ready to take Kunihiko Hidaka to court over what he wrote in his book, specifically the thinly disguised portrait of her brother. Hidaka, meanwhile, had begun to realize it might be inevitable. That got you worrying. What would you do if that photograph was submitted as evidence in court?

“I imagine your worries began when Hidaka wrote that novel. When Ms. Fujio started pressing Hidaka, your fear built until, finally, you were ready to commit murder.

“That sounds plausible. Except, I’ve left out the most important piece of the puzzle: the true nature of your relationship with Kunihiko Hidaka. Why did you feel the need to kill Hidaka to keep your secret? This was a man who you were on friendly terms with in recent years. He never even alluded to you or what you did in his novel about Fujio. Why couldn’t you expect Hidaka to continue to keep your secret safe even if things got drawn out between him and Miyako Fujio?

“In your confession, you portrayed the relationship between Hidaka and Ms. Fujio as one of mutual antagonism. Yet we owe it to ourselves to question everything you’ve written, don’t you agree? Let’s look at some facts we were able to independently corroborate. One, you weren’t friends with Hidaka in middle school, yet you actively sought out his friendship and indeed established a relationship with him years later. He even helped introduce you to a publisher so you could become a full-time writer, writing children’s books. Furthermore, in his repeated talks with Miyako Fujio, your name and your involvement in the events described in Forbidden Hunting Grounds remained a secret, again due to Hidaka’s discretion.

“If we try to reconstruct who Hidaka was from just these facts, we find he closely resembles himself as a child. ‘A boy who was kind to everyone around him,’ as he’s been described. In fact, I think it’s possible that, regardless of your intentions, Hidaka honestly thought of you as a friend.

“It took me some time to arrive at this realization because this image of Hidaka was so different than the one I had as I began the investigation. In fact, that image tugged at the back of my mind the entire time I was gathering information about Hidaka’s childhood days.

“Was this disjuncture between what I was hearing and what I felt the result of what I read in your false confession? No. The negative image of Hidaka had been planted in my head much earlier than that—before your arrest. Ultimately I realized where it came from: your original account of the day of the murder.

“When I first read that account, I paid attention only to the details about the discovery of the body itself. Yet there was a very deeply laid trap in the last place I thought to look for one.

“From the look on your face, I can tell I’ve hit the mark. That’s right, I’m talking about the cat. The one you killed.

We found the pesticide mixed into the dirt in the planters at your apartment. You would have been better off flushing the extra down the drain. The pesticide in your apartment matched the one we found in the cat. The owner had it in a box and buried it in her garden. Yes, we exhumed the cat and tested the body.

“Maybe you read about Hidaka’s trouble with that cat in his article? Or since you two were getting along so well, maybe he told you himself? So you made the poisoned meatballs, snuck into the garden, and killed that woman’s cat, all to support an image of Hidaka you intended to craft in my mind.

“You know, once I realized I’d be spending time in the literary world while on this case, I decided to do a little background reading. That’s when I came across the concept of establishing character. Apparently, it won’t do just to tell the reader what a particular character is like. The author needs to show their habits or their words and let the reader form an image on their own.

“So, when you started writing your first account, you already knew you’d need to establish your main character, Kunihiko Hidaka, as early as possible. What better way to show his cruelty than to have him kill a cat? What a happy coincidence you ran into the cat’s owner in the garden that day. Throwing that in at the beginning of your account just made the revelation of Hidaka’s wrongdoing all the more believable.

“I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Even after I’d arrested you and realized that your account wasn’t to be trusted, it never occurred to me that the episode with the cat might be a lie, and I never attempted to adjust my initial impression of Hidaka.

“I believe that of all the traps you laid for me, that was your finest.

“When I realized it was you who killed the cat, a lightbulb went on. What if the reason you killed the cat was the same reason for the entire crime? In other words, what if your real objective was not just to kill Hidaka, but to ruin him? Now, I thought, we’re getting somewhere.

“Just a moment ago I suggested that you wanted to cover up your own past by killing the only one who knew about it. You made no attempt to deny this, and I think there’s some truth to this. But it wasn’t the reason for your elaborate plan, it was just the final push you needed.

“Once you decided Hidaka had to die, what were your next steps? The first thing you realized was that you’d need a proper motive. It would have to be one that would, once revealed, not only defame the actual victim but would also turn public sympathy in your favor. The solution you came up started with his wife Hatsumi’s infidelity and ended with your enforced ghostwriting. If everything went according to plan, not only would you destroy Hatsumi’s reputation and Hidaka’s character, but you’d forever blacken his professional reputation and steal the credit for his writing to boot.

“This, of course, was the prize you were working for as you wrote out all of those manuscripts and spent those hours under the cold winter sky making your video. I doubt you’d have gone to such lengths merely to hide your own past. That was worth a little effort, sure, but murder was just another step in your plan to destroy everything Hidaka ever built and taint everything he ever had.

“I wondered for a long time what it would take to drive someone to do that. To devote what little time remained to them to destroying another person’s character. To be honest, I couldn’t find any logical explanation for such behavior. I wonder if you’d even be able to explain it yourself, Mr. Nonoguchi.

“It reminds me of something that happened ten years ago. Perhaps you remember—that time when one of my students stabbed the ringleader of a group of bullies right after graduation. When the police asked those bullies why they’d abused my student so severely, all they were able to come up with was that they ‘just didn’t like him.’ It was just hate. Pure, simple malice.

“I wonder if you aren’t operating on the same level. I wonder if, deep inside you, it wasn’t just malice toward Hidaka, incomprehensible even to yourself, that led to his death.

“But where could such malice have come from? I looked into your past and his in great detail, but I couldn’t find any reason why Hidaka earned your hatred. He was a good boy… no, an exceptional boy. You should have thanked him, not killed him. Even after you’d spent all that time egging on Masaya Fujio, goading him to torture Hidaka, years later he was there to help you.

“I know you felt inferior to him. And I know how, as an adult, you envied Hidaka. The one person in the world you couldn’t bear had become a hugely successful author. Everything you wanted, he’d achieved. When I imagine how you must’ve felt when he received his first award, it makes all the hair on my body stand on end.

“But you still reached out to him, didn’t you? That’s how badly you wanted to become a published author. You thought having a connection to him would be a shortcut to achieving your dream, so you decided to ignore the malice in your heart, if only temporarily.

“It wasn’t easy, was it? I can’t say whether it was bad luck, a lack of talent, or a mix of both, but you never realized your dream. When your body began to fall apart around you, you realized that you never would.

“When you realized your own death was imminent, you stopped holding back. You couldn’t bear to leave this world with so much rage burning inside you. The fact that Hidaka knew about your past and he had proof that could expose those secrets, that wasn’t the reason you acted. But it was enough to push you over the edge, to push that darkness you held within you out into the light. You decided to spend your last days planning the perfect crime. You murdered a man and let yourself get caught in order to steal everything from your victim—to ruin his name and his honor and everything he loved, even stealing the credit for the books he wrote.

“That pretty much sums up my thoughts on this case. Do you disagree with anything I’ve said?… I’ll take your silence as a no.

“Let me suggest one last thing before I go.

“In the background interviews I conducted, people remember you and your mother having a dislike, even a prejudice, against Hidaka and the other people living in your neighborhood.

“There was no basis for that prejudice. Nor any indication anyone else shared that prejudice.

“It occurred to me that this whole dislike of Hidaka might not have started with you at all. It might be your mother’s misguided prejudices that planted the seed that led you astray. I just wanted you to know that. Since you can’t blame Hidaka anymore, maybe you can blame her.

“I’ve been talking for some time, haven’t I? My mouth’s quite dry.

“Now that you’ve given your permission for the surgery—and I checked, it’s irrevocable—the doctors will be coming for you soon. I hope your surgery is a success, and that you have many years left ahead of you.

“After all, you have a trial to look forward to.”