Malice

3 RESOLUTION ^{OSAMU NONOGUCHI’S ACCOUNT}

Detective Kaga has given me special permission to complete the following account before I leave the room I currently occupy. Why I asked to be allowed to do so is, I’m sure, incomprehensible to him. I doubt he’d understand even if I told him that it was a writer’s basic instinct to want to finish a piece he’d started, even if it was begun under false pretenses.

Yet I believe that my experiences over the past hour or so are worthy of recording. This, too, I credit to writer’s instinct—though what I write is the story of my ruination.

Detective Kaga arrived today, April 21, at precisely ten in the morning. The instant the bell rang, I had a feeling that it was him, a premonition soon confirmed when I looked through the peephole. Still, I made an effort to conceal my agitation as I welcomed him in.

“Sorry to drop in so suddenly,” he said in his customary calm tone. “There was something I wanted to discuss.”

“What is that?” I asked, inviting him in.

I showed him to the sofa and offered him tea. He said not to bother, but I made it anyway.

“So what’s this about?” I said, placing the teacup in front of him. I noticed that my hand was trembling. I glanced up to see Detective Kaga looking at my hand.

He didn’t touch his tea. “Actually,” he said, staring straight at me, “I’ve come to say something extremely difficult.”

“Yes?” I was desperately trying to remain calm, when in fact my heart was racing so fast, I thought I might pass out at any moment.

“I’m going to have to ask you to let me search your apartment.”

I tried a look of astonishment, then let it fade into what I hoped was a natural-looking smile. I’m not sure whether the performance worked. To Kaga, I’m afraid it probably just looked like a grimace.

“What’s this about? You’re not going to find anything here.”

“I wish that were true, but I’m afraid I will.”

“Wait a second. Let me get this straight: You think I killed Hidaka? And you think you’re going to find evidence of that here?”

Detective Kaga gave a short nod. “Essentially, yes.”

“Well, this is a surprise,” I lied. I shook my head and attempted a little sigh. This performance was already straining the limits of my abilities. “I’m not sure what to say, this is so unexpected. That is, unless you’re joking? But… you’re not, are you.”

“No, I’m afraid I’m quite serious. As much as it pains me to have to say that to a former colleague, I have a duty to uncover the truth, wherever it may lie.”

“I understand your job, and I know that any reasonable suspicion, even if it involves a good friend or close relative, has to be investigated. But, to be honest, I’m surprised and more than a little bewildered. It’s all so sudden.”

“I’ve brought a warrant.”

“A search warrant? I’m sure you have. But before you start waving it around, maybe you can tell me why it’s come to this? I mean—”

“Why I suspect you?”

“Yes, I guess that’s it. Or do you normally just start rooting through someone’s stuff without so much as a word of explanation?”

“Sometimes, if necessary.” He looked down at the table, then finally reached for his cup and took a sip of tea. Then he looked back at me. “But I’d be happy to explain it to you.”

“Well, I’m much obliged. Though I can’t promise I’ll see things the same way you do.”

Kaga pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket. “The most important point is the time of death. We understand that Kunihiko Hidaka was killed somewhere between five and seven o’clock, but according to the coroner, it is extremely unlikely he died after six. Estimating the time of death by examining the state of digestion of food is a very reliable method, and in a case like this, it can usually narrow the time of death down to a smaller window of time than two hours. Yet we have a witness who testifies that Hidaka was alive after six o’clock.”

“Well, it’s the truth. What do you want me to say? I realize the possibility is slight, but we’re talking natural processes here. Would it really be that astonishing if the doctor was twenty or thirty minutes off?”

“Of course not, but what concerns us is that the basis of this testimony was a phone call. We can’t be sure that it was really Hidaka on the phone.”

“Oh, no, I’m sure it was Hidaka. Without question.”

“Yes, but you can’t prove that. No one except you was on that phone call.”

“I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“I would like to do that—I would; but your word won’t hold up in court.”

“Well… I did answer the phone, yes, but don’t forget there was a person standing right next to me at the time. You talked to Mr. Oshima from Dojisha about this, didn’t you?”

“We did. He confirmed that you received a call shortly after six.”

“Didn’t he hear us talking?”

“No, he only heard you. He said it sounded like you made arrangements to meet someone. And that afterward, you told him the person you were talking to was Kunihiko Hidaka.”

“So how doesn’t that qualify as proof? Is it that you think someone else called me and I just made it sound like it was from Hidaka? Is that what you’re getting at?”

Kaga frowned and chewed his lower lip for a moment before replying. “The possibility can’t be ruled out entirely.”

“Well, I wish it could, because it doesn’t look like you’re much for taking someone at his word.” I made a show of being offended. “What I don’t get is why you’re so hung up on the time of death. Sure, it might be a little off from what the autopsy says, but not by much. Yet from what you’re saying, it sounds like if it strays a few minutes in the wrong direction, then I’ve just made the whole thing up. I hope you have a better reason for doubting me, because if not, frankly, it’s insulting.”

Kaga stared me in the eye for a long moment before responding, “I do have a better reason.”

“Well, let’s hear it.”

“The cigarette.”

“Excuse me?”

“You told me that Mr. Hidaka was a heavy smoker, to the point where it sometimes felt like he was fumigating his office.”

“What of it?” I felt an ugly premonition, like black smoke, spreading to fill my chest.

“There was only one cigarette butt in the ashtray.”

I gasped despite myself.

“One cigarette butt, thoroughly mangled. If he’d done any work after Miyako Fujio went home a little after five, there should’ve been others. Furthermore, the one cigarette that was there wasn’t one he smoked while he was working. He smoked it while he was talking to you, Mr. Nonoguchi. You said as much in your account.”

I dimly recalled Kaga mentioning something about the number of cigarettes Hidaka had smoked. Had he been onto me this whole time?

“In other words,” he continued, “from the time that Miyako Fujio left Hidaka alone to the time that he was killed, he didn’t smoke even one cigarette. I mentioned this to the wife, and she told me that even if he’d only been working for thirty minutes, he’d have smoked at least two or three. She said he also had a tendency to smoke more when he was starting work on a new installment. And yet, that night he didn’t smoke a single cigarette. What am I to make of this?”

I had already begun inwardly chastising myself. It was so obvious, yet it had never crossed my mind. Probably because I don’t smoke.

“Maybe he was out of cigarettes?” I tried, realizing this tactic was probably futile. “Or he realized he didn’t have enough to last, so he was pacing himself?”

“That day at lunch, Hidaka bought four packs. A pack with fourteen cigarettes remained on his desk, and there were three unopened packs in his desk drawer.”

Though Kaga spoke softly, I could feel his words slowly advancing toward me, each step powerful, inevitable. I remembered that he was good at kendo, and a shiver ran down my spine.

“Well, what do you know!” I said. “I guess that would make a single cigarette seem a little suspicious. Though you’d have to ask Hidaka himself why he didn’t smoke more. Maybe he had a sore throat, or something like that?” It was a last, desperate line of defense.

“If that were the case, I wouldn’t think he’d have smoked while you were there, either. I’m afraid we have to assume the most likely explanation.”

“In other words, that he was killed earlier.”

“Much earlier. In fact it only makes sense if he left his office just after Ms. Fujio departed, then, after his wife left for the hotel, he went back to his desk and was killed immediately.”

“You seem pretty sure of that.”

“Going back to the cigarette briefly, it’s worth noting that Hidaka didn’t even smoke one while Ms. Fujio was there—and with good reason. According to his wife, Ms. Fujio didn’t like cigarette smoke, and he’d decided not to smoke while she was there, in hopes it would help smooth things out.”

“No kidding.” One thing I could say about Hidaka: he was always a shrewd tactician.

“And yet there is no doubt that his conversation with Ms. Fujio was stressful. One would assume that as soon as she left, and he was done speaking to his wife, he’d have lit up a cigarette with the eagerness of a starving man. Yet there are no butts. Did he not smoke? Could he not smoke? I believe it is the latter.”

“Because he was killed.”

“Yes.” Kaga nodded.

“But I left the Hidaka’s a long time before that.”

“I know. You went out the front door. After which you went around to the garden, to Hidaka’s office window.”

“You say that like you were standing there watching me do it.”

“Actually, it was you who gave me the idea, albeit while you were speculating that Miyako Fujio was the killer. In your version, she pretended to leave the Hidakas’ and then went around to the office, did she not? I wondered if you weren’t simply relating what you yourself had done.”

I shook my head slowly. “Serves me right for trying to be helpful! I wouldn’t have said a thing if I’d thought you were going to twist it around and throw it back at me like this.”

Detective Kaga looked down at his notebook. “In your own account, you described your departure from the Hidakas’ in the following manner: “‘Good-bye,” she said, and stood watching me until I’d turned the corner.’ She here refers to Rie Hidaka.”

“So? That’s what happened.”

“According to what you wrote, she went as far as the front gate to see you off. Yet when I talked to her about this, she said she only saw you as far as the front door. How do I explain this contradiction?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a contradiction! One of us remembered events differently, that’s all.”

“Really? I don’t think so. I think you purposely wrote a false account of what happened. You did this in order to camouflage the fact that you never went to the corner. You never even left the front gate.”

I scoffed. “Ridiculous. You’re dreaming this stuff up and trying to make it all fit. It’s amazing what you can accomplish once you’ve drawn your conclusion in advance.”

“Personally, I feel I’m approaching this case very objectively.”

The look in his eyes made me flinch, even though my brain was off wondering about completely unrelated things, such as why this man loved saying personally all the time.

“Fine, whatever. You’re free to make whatever conjectures you like. But while you’re at it, I’d like you to paint the whole picture for me. What happened next? I was crouched beneath the window, and what then? Did I sneak in through the window and whack Hidaka?”

“Did you?” Detective Kaga looked directly at me.

“Hey, I’m asking you.”

Kaga shook his head slightly. “I’m afraid only the one who did it knows all the details of the crime.”

“What? Are you asking me to confess? Believe me, I’d be happy to—if I’d actually done it. But I didn’t do it. Sorry to rain on your parade. Let’s get back to the phone call, shall we? Remember, the one I got from Hidaka after you claim that he was killed? If that wasn’t from Hidaka, who was it from? My story has been reported widely in the press. If someone else happened to have called me around then, wouldn’t they have gone to the police by now?” I stuck up a finger as though I’d just had a thought. “Wait, you think I had a conspirator, don’t you! You think I had someone call me on purpose.”

Kaga looked around the room without answering. His eyes eventually came to rest on the cordless phone sitting on the dining-room table. He went over, picked it up, and then came back to the sofa.

“You didn’t need a conspirator. All you needed was for this phone to ring.”

“But how does the phone ring if no one’s calling?” I clapped my hands. “Wait! I see what you’re getting at. You think I was carrying a cell phone in my pocket. Then, when Oshima wasn’t looking, I called my own home phone. Right?”

“That would be one way to do it.”

“Fine, but that’s impossible. I don’t have a cell phone, and I don’t know anyone I could have borrowed one from. Besides, couldn’t you just check the records? I’m sure the telephone company would be able to see if I’d called my own phone number.”

“Actually, it turns out to be very difficult to run a reverse trace and look up where a phone call came from.”

“Ah, is that what it’s called—a reverse trace?”

“However, that isn’t necessary, since it’s very easy to tell who a particular phone call was made to. All we need to do in this case is check and see where Mr. Hidaka called that day.”

“And did you?”

“We did.” Kaga nodded.

“I already know the answer, but tell me, what did you find?”

“We found a record of a call from his house to your apartment at six thirteen.”

“Of course you did. Because he called me and we spoke.” I tried to appear confident even though my fear was growing by the moment. If the phone company record hadn’t been enough to dispel Kaga’s suspicions, then he was onto my trick.

Kaga stood and returned the cordless phone to the table. This time, however, he didn’t come back to the sofa. “Hidaka was supposed to send his finished manuscript by fax. However, there’s no fax machine in his office. I’m sure you know why.”

I almost said that I didn’t, but I held my tongue instead.

“Because he could send it directly from his computer, right?” Kaga asked.

“I’ve heard that can be done.”

“It’s very convenient for people who still need to send faxes. You don’t have to keep paper at hand, for one thing. Of course, Hidaka was going to switch to sending in his submissions by e-mail once he was in Canada. He’d already asked his editor to make any necessary adjustments for this on their end.”

“I don’t know about any of that. I don’t use computers much. All I know is that Hidaka once mentioned something about sending faxes directly from his computer.”

“There’s nothing difficult about it. Anyone can do it. And the software comes with lots of useful features. You can send to several different numbers simultaneously if you want, and you can save a list of common recipients. Also”—Kaga paused, looking down at me—“if you set the time, you can have it send a fax automatically.”

I looked at the floor, away from his eyes. “And you think that’s what I did?”

He didn’t answer the question. There was no need.

“It was the lights that bothered me at first,” he said. “You said all the lights were out when you arrived at the Hidakas’. The killer had probably wanted to make it look like Hidaka had gone out, though you couldn’t figure out why they had left the computer on, correct? I think I know why. Because the computer was necessary for the fax trick to work. It had to be left on. After you killed Hidaka, you scrambled to create an alibi. Specifically, you turned on his computer, pulled up some suitable document, and set the computer to fax that document to you at 6:13 p.m. Then you went around and turned off every light in the house, a necessary step for the story you were going to tell. If you were going to return to the house at eight o’clock, think Hidaka wasn’t home, and then go so far as to call his hotel, you needed the lights to be off. Even if the lights had been on only in that one room, you would have come around and looked through Hidaka’s office window before calling the hotel. And you wanted Rie Hidaka to be there with you when you discovered the body.”

After this little speech Kaga paused. Perhaps he was waiting for me to retort or attempt an explanation. I remained quiet.

“I think you probably considered the computer monitor yourself,” he went on after a moment. “As I said previously, the monitor puts out quite a bit of light. But the PC needed to be running. You could’ve turned off just the monitor, but that would’ve been dangerous. Rie was with you when you discovered the body, and if she had noticed that the computer was running but the monitor was turned off, that might’ve been enough to tip off the police to your trick right there on the spot.”

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was completely dry. I realized I was terrified of meeting Kaga’s eyes. He had seen right through my flimsy layers of subterfuge, right through my skull and down into the very thoughts that had been in my head.

“I’m guessing you left the Hidakas’ around five thirty. On your way back to your apartment, you stopped and called Mr. Oshima at Dojisha Publishing and asked him to come over right away to pick up your latest manuscript. Mr. Oshima had been expecting the manuscript by fax that day and was surprised by the sudden, urgent request to see him. Luckily for you, it’s a straight shot on the train from his office and he was able to make it to your apartment in thirty minutes. I noted that none of this was mentioned in your account. In fact, from what you wrote, it seemed as if Mr. Oshima had been intending to come that day all along.”

This, too, was true, but instead of saying anything, I just gave a long sigh.

“I hardly need to go into why you called Mr. Oshima over. You needed someone to corroborate your alibi. Hidaka’s computer called your house at exactly six thirteen, like you’d set it up to do. You’d turned off your own fax machine before then so you could take the call on your cordless phone. You picked up the receiver to listen to the scrambled noises of Mr. Hidaka’s fax program attempting to make a connection and then began your greatest performance. With electronic noise warbling in your ear, you begin talking as though you were speaking to another human. I call your performance great because, in fact, Mr. Oshima was completely taken in by it. After you had finished your solo one-act play, you hung up. On Hidaka’s computer’s side, the call was logged as a dialing error, and the job was suspended. Now, all that was left for you was a little cleanup. You merely had to discover the body with Rie Hidaka by your side. Then, before the police arrived, when she wasn’t looking, you needed to erase the record of the call off the computer.”

I noticed that somewhere along the way, he’d stopped reflexively bowing his head every time he said something. That bowing was the habit of a new recruit at school when speaking to a senior colleague. The change in attitude didn’t bother me, though. It was fitting given the facts of our current relationship.

“It was a decent trick. Even more impressive because you came up with it in such a short amount of time. However, you made one mistake.”

I had a feeling he was about to tell me what that was.

“You forgot about the real phone at the Hidakas’. If Mr. Hidaka had actually phoned you, then pressing the redial button on his phone should call this apartment.”

Inwardly, I screamed.

“Yet it didn’t. It called a place in Vancouver. According to the wife, Mr. Hidaka had placed a call early that morning, around six in the morning, to Canada. Of course, it might be possible to explain that one away. After he’d called your apartment, he could have attempted to call Canada only to hang up before actually letting the call go through. However, considering the time difference, that doesn’t make much sense. Someone who had gotten up especially early to make a phone call that very morning wouldn’t likely forget the time difference and mistakenly call again in the middle of the night.”

Kaga stopped talking and gazed at me. “That’s all.”

For a brief moment nothing was said between us. If Kaga was waiting for me to react, he was going to have to wait a long time. My mind was a blank.

“Nothing to say?” He sounded somewhat surprised.

Finally, I looked up and our eyes met. His were calm, unthreatening—not the look a detective would turn upon a suspect. That came as a relief, irrational though that may be.

“You never said anything about the manuscript,” I said. “What about the episode of The Gates of Ice on Hidaka’s computer? Even pretending your theory is correct so far, when did he write that?”

Tight-lipped, Detective Kaga looked up at the ceiling. I got the sense that he already knew what he was going to say, he was merely finding the right words to say it.

Finally, he spoke. “There are two possibilities. The first is that Mr. Hidaka had already written that much, and when you found that on his computer, you decided to use it to support your alibi.”

“And the other possibility?”

“The other one”—he looked back at me—“is that you wrote that manuscript. You could’ve had it with you on a disk and, in order to create your alibi, hurriedly copied it onto Hidaka’s computer.”

“That’s quite the theory!” I tried to smile, but my cheeks were too tight and my face felt frozen.

“I showed the manuscript file to a Mr. Yamabe at Somei Monthly, Hidaka’s publisher. According to him, it was clearly written by someone other than Mr. Hidaka. The wording was slightly different, and there were too many variances in things like line breaks and formatting.”

“So, er, you…” My voice came out in a hoarse rasp. I coughed to clear my throat. “You think I prepared that manuscript in advance because I was intending to kill him?”

“No, I don’t think that. Had you planned to use it to stand in for his work, you would’ve taken greater pains to match his style and format. His editor thought that wouldn’t be a terribly difficult thing to do for such a short section of a work that was already partially published. Also, given that a paperweight was the murder weapon, and that Mr. Oshima was summoned at the last minute to corroborate your alibi, I have to conclude that the murder was done on impulse.”

“So then why prepare the manuscript ahead of time?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? Why did you have in your possession a manuscript for the next installment of The Gates of Ice? And even before we ask that question, we need to ask why you’d written it in the first place. I’m very intrigued by this point in particular. I think that in the answer to that question lies your motive for killing Mr. Hidaka.”

I closed my eyes to avoid full-blown panic. “This is all in your imagination. You have no proof.”

“True. That’s why I’m here today to search your apartment. I’m sure you know by now what it is I’m looking for.”

I didn’t answer.

“I’m looking for a disk containing the manuscript. Or perhaps I’ll find it on the hard drive of your word processor over there. In fact, I’m sure I will. If you’d only prepared the manuscript as part of an elaborate murder plan, you would have destroyed the evidence. But I don’t believe that. No, it’s definitely here, somewhere.”

I opened my eyes to find Kaga staring directly at me. Except this time I was able to accept his gaze without flinching. All it took was closing my eyes for a moment to settle myself completely.

“And if you find what you’re looking for, you’re going to arrest me?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“What if I chose to turn myself in now?”

Kaga’s eyes went wide. He shook his head once. “Unfortunately, we’re past the point where it would be considered turning yourself in. Though I wouldn’t advise any attempts to resist arrest.”

“I see.” The strength left my shoulders. I felt despair; yet also a kind of relief. I no longer had to pretend. “When did you first suspect me?”

“The first night.”

“Really! Did I slip up?”

“You did.” He nodded. “You asked me about the estimated time of death.”

“Is that so strange?”

“Very. If you spoke with Mr. Hidaka after six o’clock and knew he’d been killed before you reached the house at eight o’clock, then the murder would’ve taken place during that short two-hour period. Why go out of your way to ask what you already knew?”

“Oh.”

“Also, the next day, at that restaurant, you asked me the same question again. Then I was even more certain that my hunch was correct: You didn’t want to know what time the crime had occurred. You wanted to know what time the police thought the crime had occurred.”

He was correct. I’d been checking to see whether my trick had worked.

“Well, that’s fantastic. I think you’re probably a very good detective.”

“Thank you.” He bowed his head curtly. “You might want to get ready to leave. Though I will have to keep a close watch on you. There are plenty of cases where a suspect has been left alone with unpleasant results.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to commit suicide.” I laughed. The last came naturally, surprising even me.

“I should hope not,” Kaga said with a smile.