The Devotion Of Suspect X (30 page)

“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.”