The Devotion of Suspect X

SIXTEEN

Ishigami, his face expressionless, was staring at Kusanagi. Or maybe his eyes just happen to be pointing in my direction, the detective thought. Maybe he’s not seeing me at all. The mathematician’s face was entirely devoid of emotion; it was as if his gaze was fixed on some faraway place and Kusanagi just happened to be sitting in that blank trajectory.

“The first time I saw him was on the tenth of March,” he was saying, his tone perfectly even. “He was loitering near her door when I returned home from school. I caught him putting his hand inside the mail slot in her doorway.”

“I’m sorry, this man—who was he, exactly?”

“Mr. Togashi. Though, of course, I didn’t know that at the time,” Ishigami answered.

Kusanagi and Kishitani were with him in the interrogation room. Kishitani sat off to one side, taking notes. Ishigami had asked that no one else be allowed in the room. He’d said he wouldn’t be able to tell them what he needed to say if a bunch of officers were there asking questions.

“I wondered what he was up to, so I called out to him. He looked surprised, and told me he had business with Yasuko Hanaoka. Said he was her estranged husband. That’s when I realized who he was, and I knew he was lying, but I pretended to go along with his story so as not to alarm him.”

“Wait a second, how did you know he wasn’t telling you the truth?” Kusanagi asked.

Ishigami took a short breath. “Because I know everything there is to know about Yasuko Hanaoka. I know she’s divorced, and I know she had been moving around, trying to escape her ex-husband.”

“How could you know all these things? I had heard that you hardly spoke to her, despite the fact that she’s your neighbor. That you only saw her because you frequented the lunch shop where she works.”

“That’s what we tell people, yes.”

“Excuse me?”

Ishigami straightened himself in his chair, puffing out his chest ever so slightly. “I am Yasuko Hanaoka’s bodyguard. It has been my duty to protect her from men with less than good intentions. And for obvious reasons, neither of us wanted people to know about it. I am a schoolteacher, too, after all.”

“But you told us you hardly talked to her at all when we first met,” Kusanagi pressed.

Ishigami sighed quietly. “You came to my apartment to ask questions about Togashi’s murder, didn’t you? Of course I couldn’t tell you the truth. You would have suspected something immediately.”

“Okay…” Kusanagi hesitated. “So now you’re telling me that you know everything about Yasuko Hanaoka … because you’re her bodyguard?”

“That’s correct.”

“So you’ve been close to her for some time. Since before this incident?”

“Yes. As I said before, our arrangement was a secret. We were very careful to keep our communication hidden. Not even her daughter knew about it.”

“How exactly did you do that?”

“We employed several means. Would you like me to tell you about them now?” Ishigami looked questioningly at the detective.

None of this was feeling right to Kusanagi. He had been genuinely shocked at the suggestion that the math teacher had anything like a close relationship with his attractive neighbor, and the background the man was now giving them seemed vague at best. Still, if there was any truth to this story at all, he wanted to hear it.

“No,” Kusanagi said, “I’ll ask you about that later. I’d like to hear about your dealings with Mr. Togashi first. You said that you first met him outside Yasuko Hanaoka’s apartment, and that you pretended to believe he was still married to her. What happened then?”

“He asked me whether I knew where she was. So I told him she wasn’t living there anymore—that she’d had to move recently for work. That surprised him, as you might imagine. Then he asked me if I knew where she’d moved to. I told him I did.”

“Where did you tell him she’d gone?”

Ishigami grinned. “Shinozaki. I told him she’d moved to an apartment along the Old Edogawa River.”

I wondered when Shinozaki would come up, Kusanagi thought to himself. “Is that all?” he prodded. “That wouldn’t be enough for him to find her by. That’s quite a stretch of river, and there are lots of apartment buildings along there.”

“Of course, Togashi wanted to know her new address. I told him to wait while I went back into my room, looked at a map, and wrote down an address—the address of a water treatment facility. You should’ve seen his smile when I handed him the paper. He told me I’d saved him a lot of trouble.”

“Why did you give him that address?”

“To get him to go where there wouldn’t be many witnesses. I’m familiar with the lay of the land out there, you see.”

“Wait a second.” Kusanagi stared hard at Ishigami’s face. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you’re telling me that from the very moment you met Togashi, you planned to kill him?”

“Of course,” Ishigami replied, his voice matter-of-fact. “Like I just said, it’s my job to protect Ms. Hanaoka. If someone showed up who I knew intended her harm, it was my responsibility to eliminate the problem.”

“And you believe that Mister Togashi intended her harm?”

“It’s not a question of belief, I know he did. He had given her all kinds of trouble already by that point. She moved next door to me to get away from him, after all.”

“Ms. Hanaoka told you that herself?”

“Through our usual channels of communication, yes.”

Ishigami spoke smoothly and without hesitation. He certainly had plenty of time to get his story straight before coming in here, Kusanagi reflected. And yet there was a lot about the story that seemed suspicious at best. For one thing, nothing he was saying matched the mental image of the stodgy high school teacher that Kusanagi had of him until now. Still, there was nothing to do about it but hear the rest of what the man had to say, whether it was true or not.

“What did he do after you gave him the address?”

“He asked if I knew where she was working now. I told him I didn’t know where it was, but I’d heard she was working at a restaurant. I also told him I’d heard that she got off at eleven o’clock, and that her daughter would go to the restaurant after school and wait so they could go home together. Of course, I was making all that up.”

“And why did you fabricate this information?”

“To make it easier to predict how he would act. I couldn’t have him dropping by my selected location too early. It might be out of the way, but there are still people in the area during daylight hours. I knew that if he thought Yasuko wouldn’t be getting off work until that time, and that her daughter would be with her, he would have no reason to visit her apartment before then—”

“Hold on,” Kusanagi raised his hand, cutting him off. “Are you telling me you thought of all of that right there on the spot?”

“Yes. You don’t believe me?”

“No … it’s just that I’m impressed you could come up with such a plan so quickly.”

“It’s really not much,” Ishigami said, his smile fading. “I knew he wanted desperately to see her. All I had to do was use that desire against him. It wasn’t difficult.”

“Well, maybe not for you.” Kusanagi licked his lips. “So, what happened then?”

“Before he left, I gave him my cell phone number. I told him to call me if he couldn’t find the apartment. Typically, people suspect something when strangers show them that kind of kindness, but he didn’t suspect a thing. I don’t think he was very smart, to tell the truth.”

“Very few people would imagine someone they’d only just met was planning to kill them.”

“If you ask me, he should have suspected something because it was the first time we’d met. In any case, he took the fake address, put it in his pocket, and practically skipped off down the hallway. When I saw that he had left, I went back inside my place and began making preparations.” Ishigami paused and slowly reached for the teacup on the table. He took a couple long gulps of the lukewarm tea.

“What sort of preparations?”

“Nothing too elaborate. I changed into some more comfortable clothes, and waited. I also spent some time thinking about the best way to kill him. After running through several options, I chose strangulation. I reasoned that would be the most reliable method. There’s no telling how much blood I might have got on me if I tried to stab or bludgeon him to death. Nor was I sure I could do it with just one blow. Also, strangulation made the choice of a murder weapon much simpler. I knew I needed something strong, so I went with the shielded electrical cord to a kotatsu.”

“Which you carried to the scene of the crime?”

Ishigami nodded. “I left the house around ten o’clock. I had the actual cord with me, as well as a box cutter and a disposable lighter. On my way to the station, I noticed a blue plastic sheet someone had thrown out in the garbage, so I folded that and brought it with me, too. I got off the train at Mizue and took a taxi to the Old Edogawa.”

“Mizue Station? Not Shinozaki?”

“Of course not,” Ishigami replied without hesitation. “I didn’t want to run into the man by mistake. I got out of the taxi some distance away from the place I’d told him about, too. I knew that, in order to retain the element of surprise, I needed to avoid being seen until the time was right.”

“So what did you do after you got out of the taxi?”

“Taking care not to be seen by anyone, I headed toward our meeting place. Not that I needed to be too careful. There was hardly anyone on the street.” Ishigami took a sip of tea. “Right after I arrived at the river bank, my cell phone began to ring. It was him. He told me he’d arrived at the address I’d given him, but couldn’t find the apartment building. So I asked him where he was, and he told me in some detail—all the while not realizing that I was approaching his location as we talked. I told him I would check the address again and call him back. By that time I knew exactly where he was. I could see him sitting—sprawled out, really—by a clump of grass on the riverbank. I walked up slowly, so as not to make a sound. He didn’t notice me at all until I was right behind him. But by then, I already had the cord around his neck. He resisted, of course, but I had the advantage, and he went limp quickly. It was a lot easier than I’d expected, to be honest.” Ishigami’s eyes fell back down to his cup. “Might I have another cup of tea?”

Kishitani stood and poured him another cup from the pot. Ishigami nodded in thanks.

“The victim was a healthy man in his forties. I wouldn’t think he’d be that easy to strangle if he resisted with all his strength,” Kusanagi ventured.

Ishigami’s expression didn’t change. Only his eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m the instructor at the judo club at my school. Coming from behind, it’s quite easy to overpower a man, even if he’s bigger than you.”

Kusanagi nodded, his eyes going to Ishigami’s ears. They were puffy, cauliflower ears—the sure sign of a judo wrestler. There were more than a few men on the police force with ears like his.

“What did you do after you killed him?” he asked.

“I knew I had to conceal the identity of the body. I thought that if you police knew who he was, you would surely suspect Yasuko Hanaoka. First, I removed his clothing with the box cutter. Then I smashed his face.” Ishigami’s tone was cold and even. “That is, I laid him on his back, put the plastic sheet over his face, and struck him several times with a large rock. I don’t remember how many times I hit him, but I’d say a dozen at least. Then I used the lighter to burn off his fingerprints. After all that, I took his clothes and left the scene. A little way from the bank, I found an oil drum, so I put the clothes in there and burned them. The fire leapt a lot higher than I’d expected, and I started to worry that someone might notice, so I decided to just leave them there. I walked back to the road, caught a cab, and went to Tokyo Station, where I got in another cab for home. It was a little after midnight when I returned to my apartment.” He let out a drawn-out sigh. “That’s it. That’s what I did. You can find the electrical cord, the box cutter, and the disposable lighter in my apartment.”

Kusanagi glanced at Kishitani out of the corner of his eye; his assistant was writing furiously. The detective set a cigarette to his lips. He lit it, blew out a puff of smoke, and stared at Ishigami. The man’s face was expressionless once more, his eyes a total blank.

There weren’t any gaping holes in the story. Everything he’d said about the body’s condition and the scene of the crime matched what the police knew. Since none of the details had been released publicly, it was easier to think that he was telling the truth than to believe the alternative.

“Did you tell Yasuko Hanaoka that you killed him?” Kusanagi asked.

“Why would I?” Ishigami replied. “I couldn’t have her slipping up and telling someone else. Women are terrible at keeping secrets.”

“So you haven’t talked to her at all about what happened?”

“Not at all. And once you started sniffing around, I took great pains to make as little contact with her as possible, so as not to attract suspicion.”

“You said you had a way of communicating secretly with Ms. Hanaoka before. Could you tell me about that now?”

“There were several ways we communicated. For one, she would talk to me.”

“You mean, you would meet somewhere?”

“Nothing like that. People might see us. She would talk in her own apartment, and I would use a device to listen to her.”

“What sort of device?”

“By placing a sound amplifier on the wall between our apartments, I could hear her voice.”

Kishitani’s pen stopped in mid-stroke and he looked up. Kusanagi knew what had stopped him.

“You mean, you were eavesdropping on her?”

Ishigami’s brow furrowed with surprise and he shook his head. “It wasn’t eavesdropping. She was talking to me.”

“So Ms. Hanaoka knew about this listening device?”

“She might not have known about the device, but she was facing the wall between our apartments when she spoke.”

“So that’s why you say she was talking to you?”

“That’s right. With her daughter there, she couldn’t talk to me openly, you see. So she pretended to be talking to her daughter, when she was really sending me messages.”

The cigarette in Kusanagi’s hand had burned halfway down to the filter, but he hadn’t flicked it once. He dropped it in the ashtray. His eyes met Kishitani’s. The junior detective was scratching his neck, perplexed.

“Did Yasuko Hanaoka tell you this—that she was only pretending to talk to her daughter, when in fact she was talking to you?”

“She didn’t have to tell me. I know everything about her,” Ishigami asserted, vigorously nodding his head.

“So she didn’t tell you that, then? Maybe this whole arrangement was just in your head?”

“Nonsense!” Ishigami’s expressionless face flushed slightly. “You see, I knew about the trouble her ex-husband had been giving her because she told me about it. Why would she bother telling her daughter such things? It doesn’t make sense. She was giving all this information for my benefit. She was asking me to do something about it.”

Kusanagi waved one hand to calm him, squashing out the smoldering cigarette with the other. “You were saying you had another means of communication?”

“Yes, the phone. I called her every evening.”

“You called her house?”

“Her cell phone, to be precise. Not that we would talk. I would merely let the phone ring several times. If she had an urgent need, she was to answer. If not, she wouldn’t pick up. I always let it ring five times before hanging up. That was the number we decided upon.”

“You decided? Both of you? So she knew about this?”

“Of course. We had talked it over previously.”

“So we could ask Ms. Hanaoka about this?”

“Absolutely. That’s the only way to be sure,” Ishigami said with an air of confidence.

Kusanagi shook his head. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to repeat this story several times. We’ll be writing up a formal statement, you see.”

“Not a problem. I understand there’s procedure to be followed.”

“Before we get to that, however, there’s one last thing I wanted to ask you.” Kusanagi put his hands together on the table, interlocking his fingers. “Why’d you turn yourself in?”

Ishigami took a deep breath before asking, “Should I not have turned myself in?”

“That’s not what I asked. I just wanted to know why you decided to do so, and why now.”

Ishigami snorted. “What has that got to do with anything? Surely all you need to do your job is a confession. How about, ‘Wracked with guilt over what he had done, the murderer turned himself in’? I should think that would suffice.”

“Sorry, but you don’t exactly look wracked with guilt.”

“If you’re wondering whether I feel I did wrong, then I’d have to say I don’t—well, not exactly. I do have regrets. I wish I hadn’t done what I did. And if I had known how I would be betrayed, I never would’ve killed that man.”

“Sorry? You were betrayed?”

“Yasuko, she…” Ishigami dropped his eyes for a moment before continuing. “She’s seeing another man. Even though I was the one who dealt with her ex-husband. And if she hadn’t told me all those things, I never would’ve done it. She said it, plain and clear: ‘I want to kill him.’ So I killed him for her. You might say she was my accomplice. She made me do it, after all. In fact, I don’t know why you police aren’t over there arresting her this minute.”

In order to corroborate Ishigami’s story, the police had to search his apartment. While that was going on, Kusanagi and Kishitani went to talk to Yasuko Hanaoka. It was evening, and she and Misato were at home. The two detectives had a fellow officer take the girl outside—not to protect her from hearing anything alarming, but because they wanted to question her separately.

When she heard that Ishigami had turned himself in, Yasuko’s eyes went wide; for a moment she seemed to have stopped breathing. She opened her mouth but no words came out.

“I take it this comes as a surprise?” Kusanagi asked, paying close attention to her expression.

Yasuko shook her head slowly, and finally spoke. “I had no idea. I mean, why would he kill Togashi?”

“You can’t think of any possible motive?”

Yasuko hesitated at Kusanagi’s question, a look of bewilderment coming across her face. She looked as though she had something to say but was unwilling to say it.

“Ishigami says he did it for you. He says he killed your ex-husband on your behalf.”

Yasuko looked pained and let out a long sigh.

“So you can think of a reason.”

She nodded slightly. “I knew he had feelings for me. I just never imagined he would go so far—”

“He told us that the two of you have been in constant contact for some time now.”

“Contact?” Yasuko frowned. “We’ve barely ever spoken.”

“But there were phone calls from him? Every evening?” Kusanagi told the woman what Ishigami had said about their arrangement. Yasuko frowned again.

“So that was him calling.”

“You didn’t know?”

“I thought it might be him, maybe, but I wasn’t sure. He never gave his name.”

“I see. Can you tell us a little more about these calls?”

Yasuko explained that someone unknown started phoning her in the evening about three months ago. Without giving his name, the caller had suddenly started saying things about her personal life—things no one could possibly have known unless they had been spying on her. She was frightened, afraid that she had a stalker; but she’d been baffled by the question of who it might be. After that, the phone had rung every night at the same time, but she had never answered—except for once, when she’d picked up the receiver without thinking. Then the man on the other end said: “I understand you’ve been too busy to answer your phone. So I have a suggestion. I will call every evening, and you only need to answer if you need me for something. I will let the phone ring five times, you just need to pick up before the fifth ring.”

Yasuko had reluctantly agreed, and since that time, the phone rang every night. Apparently, the stranger was calling her from a public phone. She never answered.

“You couldn’t tell it was Ishigami from his voice?”

“Not really. We’d spoken so little. And I never picked up except for those two times, so I can’t even really remember what the voice sounded like now. In any case, I can hardly imagine someone like him doing such a thing. I mean, he’s a high school teacher!”

“That’s no guarantee of character these days, I’m afraid,” Kishitani offered. Then, as if embarrassed by his own interruption, he quickly lowered his head.

Kusanagi reflected on how the junior detective had taken the Hanaokas’ side since the very beginning. Ishigami’s turning himself in must have come as a great relief to Kishitani.

“Was there ever anything else, besides the calls?” Kusanagi asked.

“Well…” Yasuko rose and retrieved three envelopes from a nearby drawer. There was no sender or return address marked on any of them; on the front of each was only the name “Yasuko Hanaoka.”

“And these are?”

“Letters I found in the mailbox on my door. There were some others, but I threw them out. I just thought I should keep these as evidence in case there was ever a more serious problem—people are always doing that on television, you know. I didn’t much like having them, but I kept these three, just in case.”

Kusanagi opened the envelopes.

Each contained a single sheet of paper with words that had clearly been typed on a computer. None of the letters was particularly long:

I notice you’ve been putting on more makeup recently. And wearing fancier clothes. That’s not like you. Plainer attire suits you better. It also bothers me that you’ve been coming home late. You should come home right after work is finished.

Is something bothering you? If it is, please don’t hesitate to tell me about it. That’s why I call you every night, you know. There are many matters on which I could advise you. You can’t trust anyone else. You shouldn’t trust anyone else. Just me.

I have a feeling something terrible has happened. I fear you’ve betrayed me. Now, I know with all my heart that you would never do such a thing, but if you ever did, I’m not sure I would ever be able to forgive you. I am the only man for you. I am the only one who can protect you.

“Do you mind if I take these with me?”

“They’re all yours.”

“Anything else like this happen recently?”

“To me? No, nothing really…” Yasuko’s voice trailed off.

“To your daughter then?”

“Well, no. But … there was something with Mr. Kudo.”

“Mr. Kuniaki Kudo? What happened to him?”

“When I met him for dinner the other day, he said he’d received an odd letter. There was no signature or return address, but the letter told him to stay away from me. There were some photographs in the envelope, too, photos of him, taken without his knowledge.”

“So your stalker was stalking him, too?”

The detectives exchanged looks. Given all they had seen thus far, the writer of the letters would have to have been Ishigami. Kusanagi thought about Manabu Yukawa. The physicist had respected Ishigami as a fellow scientist. Kusanagi wondered if his friend would be shocked to hear that the mathematician was moonlighting as a stalker.

There was a knock at the door. Yasuko answered it, and a young detective leaned into the room. He was a member of the team that had been searching Ishigami’s apartment.

“Can I have a moment with you, Detective Kusanagi?”

“Sure.” Kusanagi nodded and headed for the door.

In the next apartment, Mamiya was sitting in the chair by the desk. The PC monitor on the table next to him was glowing. Elsewhere in the room, young detectives were packing things in cardboard boxes to take back to the station as evidence.

Mamiya pointed at the wall next to the bookshelf. “Take a look.”

Kusanagi gasped despite himself.

The wallpaper had been removed from a corner of the wall, and a square had been cut out of the drywall behind it. A thin cord dangled from the hole; on the end of the cord was a small earphone.

“Have a listen.”

Kusanagi placed the earphone into his ear and immediately could hear voices.

“If we can confirm what Ishigami is telling us, things should proceed pretty quickly. I don’t think we’ll be bothering you too much more after that, Ms. Hanaoka.”

It was Kishitani. The sound was a little fuzzy, but perfectly audible. Kusanagi glanced back at Mamiya. He wouldn’t have believed the people he was listening to were on the other side of the wall if he hadn’t seen it himself. He listened again for a moment.

“… will Ishigami be charged with?”

“That will have to be determined by the court. But it’s a pretty clear case of murder, so I should think he’ll be put away for quite some time—that is, assuming he doesn’t get the death sentence. In any case, he won’t be bothering you anymore, Ms. Hanaoka.”

For a detective, he talks way too much, Kusanagi thought, removing the earphone.

“We should show this to Ms. Hanaoka afterward. Ishigami says she knew about it, but I have my doubts about that,” Mamiya said.

“You mean Yasuko Hanaoka had no idea what Ishigami was up to?”

“I heard you talking to her over that earphone,” Mamiya said with a grin. “It’s pretty cut and dried. Ishigami was a classic stalker. Delusions of sharing some kind of bond with his target, trying to get rid of every other man who gets close to her. No wonder he hated her ex-husband.”

Kusanagi grunted.

“Why the frown? Something not sitting right with you?”

“No, it’s just I thought I had a good grasp on this Ishigami fellow, but everything he’s been telling us lately doesn’t seem to fit with my image of him. It’s confusing.”

“A man has many faces. Stalkers are never the people you think there are.”

“I know that, just … you find anything other than the listening device?”

Mamiya nodded grandly. “The kotatsu cord, for one. It was in a box along with his kotatsu in the closet. An insulated cord, too—the same kind as the one used to strangle the man. If we can find a trace of the victim’s skin on it, we’re golden.”

“Anything else?”

“Take a look.” Mamiya pushed the computer mouse back and forth on the desk. His motions were jerky; he was clearly unfamiliar with using a mouse. Kusanagi guessed that someone had just taught him. “Here.”

He had opened a wordprocessing program. A page full of writing showed on the screen. Kusanagi peered at the words.

As you can tell by the enclosed pictures, I have discovered the identity of the man you see frequently.I must ask, what is this man to you?If you’re having a relationship, that would be a serious betrayal.Don’t you understand what I’ve done for you?I believe I have the right to tell you what to do in this matter. You must stop seeing this man immediately.If you do not, my anger will be directed at him.It would be a simple thing for me to lead this man to the same fate Togashi suffered. I have both the resolve and the means to do this.Let me repeat, if you’re engaged in a relationship with this man, that is a betrayal I cannot forgive, and I will have my revenge.