The Devotion of Suspect X

SEVENTEEN

Yukawa stood at the laboratory window, staring intently at the outside. There was an unusual remoteness in his presence, a pained distance, as if an invisible regret weighed him down and drew him apart. It could have been shock at hearing of his old friend’s crime, but Kusanagi suspected it was something else.

“So,” Yukawa was saying in a low voice, “do you believe this testimony of Ishigami’s? Do you buy his story?”

“As a detective, I see no reason to doubt it,” Kusanagi said after a beat. “We’ve been able to corroborate his account from several different angles. I did some canvassing in a local park near Ishigami’s apartment where there is a public phone. That’s where he claims to have gone every night to call Yasuko Hanaoka. Turns out there’s a grocery store near where the phone is, and the proprietor there saw someone matching Ishigami’s description. He remembered him because not many people use public phones these days. He claims he saw him making calls there on several evenings.”

Yukawa slowly turned around to face Kusanagi. “That’s what you think as a detective. I asked whether you believe him. I don’t care about your investigation.”

Kusanagi nodded and sighed. “To be honest, it doesn’t feel right. There are no holes in his story. It all makes sense. But I guess I’m just having trouble imagining him doing all those things. Of course, when I tried to tell the chief that, he didn’t want to hear it.”

“I’m sure your superiors are happy now that they’ve got someone to charge with a crime. Why would they want anything else?”

“Things would be different if there were even one piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit, but there’s nothing. It’s perfect. Take the fingerprints left on the bicycle. He claims he didn’t even know the victim got there by bicycle. Nothing strange there. Ishigami’s testimony supports all the facts. With that kind of momentum, there’s nothing I could say to turn the train around at this point.”

“So, you don’t buy it, but you have no choice but to go with the flow and accept the conclusion that Ishigami is your murderer.”

“Look, I know you’re not happy about this either, but don’t take it out on me. Aren’t scientists supposed to shelve their doubts in the face of logical arguments? Wasn’t it you who told me that? I thought you were all about facts over feelings.”

Yukawa shook his head—a barely perceptible movement—then came to sit down across from Kusanagi. “The last time I met Ishigami, he presented me with a mathematical conundrum,” he said. “It’s a famous one, the P = NP problem. Basically, it asks whether it’s more difficult to think of the solution to a problem yourself or to ascertain if someone else’s answer to the same problem is correct.”

Kusanagi frowned. “That’s mathematics? Sounds more like philosophy.”

“Bear with me. By turning himself in, and giving you his testimony, Ishigami’s presented you with an answer that, no matter how you look at it, has to be correct. If you just nod your heads and say, ‘Okay, sounds good to us,’ you’ve lost. Really, what you should be doing is putting all your efforts into determining whether his answer is correct or not. It’s a challenge. You’re being tested.”

“And like I said, we looked into it. Everything backs up his story.”

“All you’re doing is tracing the steps of his proof. What you should be doing is looking to see if there aren’t any other answers that might fit what you know about this case as well. Only if you can prove that there are no legitimate answers other than the one he’s offered can you say that his is the only solution to the problem.”

Yukawa’s irritation was plain from his unusually hard tone. Kusanagi had rarely seen the levelheaded physicist this agitated.

“So you think Ishigami’s lying? He’s not the murderer?”

Yukawa frowned and lowered his eyes.

“What’s your basis for saying that?” the detective went on. “If you’ve got a theory of your own, I’d like to hear it. Or is it just that you can’t bear to think of your old friend as a killer?”

Yukawa stood and turned his back to Kusanagi.

“Yukawa?”

“It’s true. I don’t want to believe it,” Yukawa said. “Like I said before, that man is made of logic. Emotion comes a distant second. He’s capable of doing anything if he thinks it’s an effective solution to the problem at hand. Still, it’s very hard for me to imagine him going so far as to murder someone—especially someone with whom he had no personal connection.”

“And that’s your basis for refuting his story?”

Yukawa spun back around and glared at the detective. But his eyes were filled with sadness, not anger.

“There are some things in life that we have to accept as truth, even though we don’t want to believe them. I know that.”

“And still you think Ishigami’s innocent?”

Yukawa’s face twisted, and he shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“I know what you think happened. You think it was Yasuko Hanaoka who killed Togashi, and Ishigami’s been trying to protect her. But the more we’ve looked into it, the less likely that scenario seems to be. We have several pieces of evidence pointing to Ishigami’s being a stalker—so much that it would have been very hard to fake, no matter how enthusiastic he was about protecting her. Besides, how many people are there who would willingly take the blame for something like murder? Yasuko isn’t Ishigami’s wife or part of his family. She’s not even his lover. Say he had wanted to protect her, and in fact helped conceal the murder—when all that fell apart, most people would resign themselves to their failure at that point. It’s only human.”

Yukawa’s eyes widened, as though from a sudden realization. “Yes,” he muttered. “People give up when things go bad. It would be nearly impossible to protect someone to the bitter end like he would have had to do.” He gazed off into the distance. “Hard even for Ishigami. And he knows it. That’s why—”

“What?”

“No.” Yukawa shook his head. “Nothing.”

“As I see it, we have to accept that Ishigami did it. And unless some new facts come to light, I don’t see this investigation going in a different direction.”

Yukawa rubbed his face with his hands. He breathed a long quiet sigh. “He’s chosen this,” he said at last. “He’s chosen to spend the rest of his days in prison.”

“It’s not really a choice now that he’s killed someone.”

“Indeed,” Yukawa whispered. He stood still for some time, his head hanging. Then, without moving, he said, “I’m sorry, but maybe you could leave me alone for a while. I’m tired.”

Something was definitely wrong with Yukawa. Kusanagi wanted to ask more questions, but instead he rose from his chair in silence. His friend did look terribly exhausted.

Kusanagi left Laboratory 13 and made his way down the dimly lit hallway. At the top of the stairs he ran into a student. Kusanagi recognized the young man’s thin, nervous face. He was a graduate student, one of Yukawa’s; his name was Tokiwa. He was the one who had told Kusanagi that Yukawa had gone to Shinozaki the last time the detective had dropped by the laboratory.

Tokiwa nodded slightly as he walked by.

“Hey there,” Kusanagi called out. Tokiwa turned around, a look of confusion on his face, and the detective smiled at him. “Do you have a moment? There was something I wanted to ask you.”

Tokiwa checked his wristwatch and said yes, he had a little time.

They left the physics building and went to the nearest cafeteria, one frequented mostly by students in the sciences. Kusanagi bought them both coffee from a vending machine and sat down across from Tokiwa.

“This is way better than the instant stuff you guys drink in that lab,” the detective observed, taking a sip from his paper cup.

Tokiwa smiled, but his face was still tense.

So much for breaking the ice. Kusanagi inwardly debated chatting with the student for a little longer, but he decided it would only be a waste of time, so he got down to business. “I wanted to ask you about Assistant Professor Yukawa, actually. Have you noticed anything odd about him lately?”

Tokiwa was clearly bewildered by the question. Kusanagi immediately regretted his own directness, but what was done was done. “I mean, has he been looking into anything unrelated to his university work, or gone anywhere unusual?”

Tokiwa scratched his jaw. He seemed to be seriously considering the question, at least.

Kusanagi tried smiling at him. “Don’t worry, he’s not involved in an investigation or anything. It is a little hard to explain, but I can’t help getting the feeling that Yukawa is hiding something from me—because he thinks I’m better off not knowing it. I’ve tried asking, but you know how stubborn he can be.”

Kusanagi wasn’t sure how well he was getting his point across, but the student did seem to be warming to him slightly. Perhaps mentioning his professor’s stubbornness had struck a chord.

“Well,” Tokiwa began, “I’m not sure what he was researching, but Professor Yukawa was on the phone to the library a few days ago.”

“The library? You mean the university’s?”

Tokiwa nodded. “I think he was asking them whether they had newspapers.”

“Newspapers? Don’t all libraries have newspapers?”

“They do, but he wanted to know how long they kept their old newspapers.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yeah. Not that he was looking for anything particularly old. I heard him asking whether he could read all the newspapers from this month. Something like that.”

“This month? Do you have any idea whether they had what he was looking for?”

“I’m pretty sure they did, because he went to the library straight after that.”

Kusanagi nodded, thanked Tokiwa, and stood up, his cup of coffee in his hand. The paper cup was still half full.

The Imperial University library was a substantial three-story building. When Kusanagi was a student, he had only visited it two or three times at most. He guessed that additions had been built since he’d left, but he couldn’t exactly remember what the place had looked like before. The entire edifice could have been rebuilt and he wouldn’t have known the difference.

He went in now and saw a woman behind the reception counter just inside the door. He asked her if she remembered Assistant Professor Yukawa’s recent visit and if she knew which newspapers he had been interested in. She hesitated, eyeing him suspiciously.

Kusanagi sighed and showed her his badge. “Don’t worry, this has very little to do with Professor Yukawa. All I want to know is which newspapers he was looking at.” He knew it was an odd-sounding question, but he couldn’t think of any other way to find out what he needed to know.

“I believe he was interested in articles from March,” the woman said, choosing her words carefully.

“Do you know what sort of articles?”

“I can’t say that I do.” She considered for a moment. “Except, he did say that all he needed to look at the Local News section.”

“The Local News? You mind showing me where the newspapers are?”

She led him to a wide, low shelf where all the newspapers were kept in stacks—one stack for every ten days.

“I’m afraid we only have newspapers for the last month here,” she informed him. “Everything older than that we recycle. We used to keep older papers on site, but there are Internet archives where you can read past articles now.”

“But all Yukawa—Professor Yukawa—cared about was the papers from March?”

“Yes. Everything after March 10, actually.”

“March 10?”

“Yes, I believe that’s what he said.”

“You mind if I look at these?”

“Not at all. Just let me know when you’re finished.”

As soon as the librarian had turned away, Kusanagi pulled out the stack of newspapers and set them on a nearby table. He began with the Local sections from March 10.

March 10 was, of course, the day Shinji Togashi had been murdered. Which confirmed that Yukawa had been here to research the case. But what had he hoped to find in a newspaper?

Kusanagi looked for any articles that might have been related to the Togashi case. The first he found were in the evening editions from March 11. The next were in the morning editions from March 13, when the police had released the victim’s identity. That was the last mention of the case in the news until an article from the previous day, when Ishigami had turned himself in.

So what about these articles had interested Yukawa?

Kusanagi carefully read and reread a few pertinent articles. None of them said anything he wouldn’t have expected to find. Certainly, Yukawa had been privy to far more information about the case than was in the papers. Why would he have gone through the trouble of reading them?

Kusanagi crossed his arms over the stack of newspapers.

It didn’t make any sense. For one thing, a man like Yukawa wouldn’t normally rely on newspapers to help him investigate a case of this sort, if that indeed was what he’d been doing. With murders happening practically every day in Japan, most newspapers wouldn’t continue running stories about a particular case unless there was some large development. The case of Togashi’s murder wasn’t a particularly unusual one, either. Yukawa knew all that.

He also wasn’t the type to trek to the library for no reason, either.

Despite what he had said to the physicist, Kusanagi couldn’t accept that Ishigami had done what he had claimed. Nor could the detective shake the feeling that his team had been barking up the wrong tree all along. He felt that Yukawa knew what they were doing wrong. The physicist had come to the aid of Kusanagi and the police department several times before, and maybe he had some insight this time around, too. But if he did, why wasn’t he talking?

Kusanagi restacked the newspapers and went to inform the librarian that he was done.

“I hope they were of some help?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yeah, very helpful,” Kusanagi replied, without elaborating.

“You know,” the librarian said as he was signing out, “Professor Yukawa was also interested in the local papers.”

“Huh?” Kusanagi looked up. “Which local papers?”

“He asked about the papers from Chiba and Saitama Prefectures. Unfortunately, we don’t carry those.”

“Did he ask about anything else?”

“No, I think that was all.”

“Chiba and Saitama…?”

Confused, Kusanagi left the library. This time, he really had no idea what Yukawa had been thinking. Why would he be interested in local papers? Maybe he hadn’t been looking into the murder case after all.

His mind churning, Kusanagi made his way back to the parking lot. He had just climbed into the driver’s seat and was about to turn the ignition key when Manabu Yukawa came walking out of the university building right in front of him. He was wearing a dark navy jacket in place of his lab coat, and he was making a beeline for the front gates, a look of intense concentration on his face.

After watching as Yukawa reached the street and turned left, Kusanagi started his car and headed out onto the roadway himself. Passing through the gates, he glanced over just in time to see Yukawa climb into a cab. Kusanagi pulled onto the road just as the cab was pulling away.

Yukawa typically spent most of each day at the university. He’d always told Kusanagi that, being single, there was nothing for him to do at home, and it was easier for him to read or play the occasional game of racquetball at the university. Meals were easier there, too.

Kusanagi glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even five o’clock yet. Yukawa wouldn’t be headed home for the day already.

Kusanagi began tailing Yukawa’s cab. As he drove he memorized the name of the cab company and the car’s license plate number, so that even if he happened to lose them along the way, he would be able to call the company and find out where the cab had dropped off its passenger.

The taxi was heading east down a relatively busy street. Several other cars moved in between it and Kusanagi’s car, but the detective managed to avoid losing his quarry.

He had been following them for some time when the taxi passed through the Nihonbashi area and stopped just before crossing the Sumida River, right by the Shin-Ohashi Bridge. Ishigami’s apartment building lay just across the bridge.

Kusanagi pulled over to one side of the road and watched the cab from there. Yukawa got out of the cab and went down the staircase at the side of the bridge.

Doesn’t look like he’s headed for the apartment, at least.

Kusanagi quickly checked his surroundings, looking for a place to park. He was in luck and found a spot by a parking meter. He left his car there and quickly followed after Yukawa.

The physicist was walking slowly downstream along the Sumida River. He didn’t seem to have any particular destination in mind; it appeared that he was just walking. Occasionally, he glanced at the homeless people who had set up camp there, but he never paused for long.

When he did stop, it was well past the last of the homeless camps. He rested his elbows on the fence that ran along the river’s edge. Then he suddenly turned to look in Kusanagi’s direction.

Kusanagi hesitated, but Yukawa didn’t seem particularly surprised. He was even smiling, though thinly.

The detective strode forward. “You saw me?”

“Your car kind of stands out,” Yukawa said simply. “Hardly ever see old Skylines like that on the road these days.”

“And did you get out where you did because you knew you were being followed? Or had you planned to come here from the beginning?”

“Both, and neither. My original destination was ahead of here. When I noticed you were following me, I had the taxi driver let me off a little early, because I wanted to bring you to this place.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why did you want to take me here?” Kusanagi asked, quickly scanning the area with his eyes.

“This is where I was when I last talked to Ishigami. I told him something then. I told him there was no such thing in this world as a useless cog, and that even a cog may decide how it is to be used.”

“Excuse me? A cog?”

“Yes. After that, I tried asking him several questions I had about the case. He was pretty much ‘No comment’ about the whole thing, except that after we parted, he came up with his own answer. That answer was to turn himself in.”

“So you’re saying that he resigned himself to his fate after hearing what you told him?”

“ ‘Resignation’… I suppose you could call it that. For him, it was more like playing his last trump card. One he had been preparing assiduously for some time.”

“So what was it you told him?”

“Just what I said, that thing about the cog.”

“No, after that. You said you asked him questions. That’s what I wanted to know.”

A quiet smile came to Yukawa’s face and he shook his head slowly. “That’s not the important part.”

“It’s not?”

“The important part is the bit about cogs. That’s when he decided to turn himself in.”

Kusanagi sighed loudly. “You were checking out the newspapers at the university library, right? What were you looking for?”

“Did Tokiwa tell you that? I’m surprised you’ve taken such an interest in my daily goings-on.”

“Hey, it wasn’t by choice. You wouldn’t tell me anything yourself.”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind. It’s your job, after all. Feel free to investigate me all you like.”

Kusanagi stared at Yukawa intently for a moment, then lowered his eyes. “Yukawa, please. Stop talking in riddles. You know something. Tell me what it is. Ishigami didn’t murder that man, did he? If that’s true, then why would he say he did? You don’t want an old friend getting locked up for a murder he didn’t commit, do you?”

“Look up.”

Kusanagi looked back up. He breathed in sharply. The physicist’s face was twisted with grief; he pressed one hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes closed.

“Of course I don’t want him to be accused of murder. I just don’t see any way out of it. I wish none of this had happened.”

“What’s got you all worked up? Why don’t you just tell me? C’mon, we’re friends.”

Yukawa opened his eyes again, his face still severe. “Yes. You’re my friend, but you’re also a detective.”

Kusanagi didn’t know what to say to that. For the first time in the many years he had known Yukawa, he felt a wall between them. Here his friend was showing him pain he had never shown before, and Kusanagi was entirely unable to ask him why.

“I’m going to Yasuko Hanaoka’s,” Yukawa said. “Want to come with me?”

“Can I?”

“I don’t care. Just, I’d prefer it if you kept quiet.”

“Fine.”

Yukawa spun around and began to walk back toward the bridge. Kusanagi followed after him. Apparently, Yukawa’s initial destination had been the lunch shop, Benten-tei. Once again, Kusanagi found himself burning with questions he wanted to ask, yet unable to say a word. They walked in silence.

Just before Kiyosu Bridge, Yukawa climbed the steps to the road. Kusanagi followed and found Yukawa waiting for him at the top.

“See that office building?” The physicist pointed to the building closest to them. “See the glass doors at the entrance?”

Kusanagi looked and saw the two of them reflected in the doors. “Yeah. What about them?”

“When I visited Ishigami right after the murder, I saw the two of us reflected like this in these doors. Actually, I didn’t notice at first. It was Ishigami who brought it to my attention. Until that moment, I hadn’t even considered the possibility he might be involved with the case. I was just happy to be reunited with an old competitor.”

“So you started to suspect him when you saw your two reflections?”

“It was what he said. ‘How have you managed to stay so young, Yukawa? You still have a full head of hair! How different we two are!’—Then he ran his fingers over his own head. It surprised me. Ishigami had never been the type to worry about physical appearances. He had always been of the opinion that a man’s value was not determined by such things, and he’d never wanted to live a life where such things could be a concern. Yet here he was, worried about his thinning hair. Something about which he could do nothing. That was when I realized he was in a position where he suddenly did have to worry about his own appearance—in other words, he was in love. Yet why would he suddenly come out and reveal such a thing, here, in this place?”

Kusanagi understood. “Because he was about to see the girl of his dreams.”

Yukawa nodded. “My thoughts exactly. I started thinking that this woman working at the lunch shop, his neighbor, whose ex-husband had so recently been killed, was the object of his affections. Which raised an important question: what was his relationship to the case? If he was so taken with this woman, he would have to be worried about it, yet he was playing the part of a disinterested observer to a T. Or perhaps I was assuming too much and he wasn’t in love at all. That’s why I got together with him again and accompanied him to the lunch shop. I thought I might see something in his expression that would reveal him. And as chance would have it, we ran into someone entirely unexpected at the shop—an acquaintance of Yasuko Hanaoka.”

“Kudo,” Kusanagi said. “He’s dating her.”

“So it seems. And when I saw Ishigami’s face as he watched this Kudo fellow and her talking—” Yukawa narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “That did it. I knew at that moment that Ishigami was infatuated with her. I could see jealousy written all over his face.”

“But that raises another question, doesn’t it?”

“It does. There was only one way to explain the resulting contradiction.”

“Ishigami was involved with the case—so that’s why you started to suspect him.” Kusanagi glanced back at the glass doors. “You scare me sometimes, you know. I’m sure Ishigami never suspected such a tiny imperfection in his performance would become a fatal flaw.”

“He’s a unique man. And even after all those years, my memory of him as he was back then is still vivid. If it weren’t, I’m sure I wouldn’t have have noticed a thing.”

“His bad luck,” Kusanagi said, starting toward the road. He stopped when he noticed that Yukawa wasn’t following him. “I thought you were going to Benten-tei?”

Eyes downcast, Yukawa came toward him. “I have to ask you to do something I normally wouldn’t ask. I don’t think you’ll like it.”

Kusanagi chuckled. “That depends on what it is.”

“Do you think you can forget you’re a detective, just for a moment?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“There’s something I need to tell you, but you my friend, not you the detective. And I can’t have you telling anyone else, ever. Not your police chief, not your friends, not even your family. Can you promise me this?”

Kusanagi saw a terrible urgency in the eyes behind the wire-frame glasses. He could tell that Yukawa felt forced into making a decision he wasn’t ready to make.

He wanted to say, “It depends on what you tell me.” But Kusanagi swallowed his words. If he said that, Yukawa would never look at him as a friend again.

“Fine. I promise.”