Even in his worst nightmares, Naoki had never imagined such a scenario. Had she been involved in an accident or just fallen sick, he might have been better able to come to terms with his loss. What, though, was he supposed to do when she just vanished one day? When he heard the news of her disappearance, he raged against the Namikis, all the time knowing it was unfair. Why didn’t they keep a closer eye on their daughter?
Saori’s disappearance upended Naoki’s whole existence. He lost his enthusiasm for life and spent his days in a stupor. He became an empty shell of a man.
A fragrant aroma brought Naoki back to himself. Rumi was in the room with a tray laden with coffee cups.
“Black, right?”
“Please.” Stretching out a hand, he took a cup. He took a swig, but the flavor hardly registered. Even his taste buds had dulled. Thoughts of Saori monopolized all his faculties.
“Hey,” said Rumi. “Do you think the man in the photo is the killer?”
“Don’t know... but it seems probable.”
“He’ll get the death sentence if he is.”
Naoki cocked his head.
“Don’t be too sure about that. Murdering one person isn’t always enough to get you the death sentence.”
“Seriously?” Rumi’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Definitely. The sentence is more like ten-something years in jail, I think.” Naoki put his cup down and gazed off into space. “If I could get away with it, though, I’d kill the guy myself.”
8
A week had passed since the establishment of the task force. Director Mamiya, who had just received an update from Detective Kusanagi, was looking gloomy. And no wonder. They had uncovered next to nothing.
“As things stand, this pension thing is our only angle of attack,” Mamiya said. He was sitting down and leafing through a written report.
“Whether he was stealing from her pension or not, we still need to prove that Hasunuma used to visit his stepmother’s house,” said Kusanagi, who was standing in front of him.
“Any results from canvassing the neighborhood?”
“So far, nothing.”
Mamiya scowled and groaned.
Over the past week, the joint investigation task force had been looking for evidence that Kanichi Hasunuma had visited his stepmother over the past six years. If they could find even a single instance of him having done so, Mamiya and Kusanagi believed they could use that to prove that he knew his stepmother was dead.
The Shizuoka Prefectural Police had found something important: Someone had been using an ATM card to periodically withdraw money from her bank account. In fact, just recently, almost all the money in the account had been withdrawn at an ATM in central Tokyo. When they reviewed the security-camera footage, they found a man who resembled Hasunuma. Perhaps, when he heard about his stepmother’s body being found, he’d decided to withdraw all the money he could before the account was frozen.
This was what Kusanagi had been hoping for. If they could find evidence suggesting that Hasunuma knew his stepmother was dead all along, then they could arrest him on a charge of fraud.
Even though a large number of detectives were interviewing people, so far they had nothing to show for their pains.
They had looked into arresting Hasunuma for illegal disposal of a dead body. Here, too, they confronted the same problem: They couldn’t indict him unless they could prove that he had actually been to the house. The statute of limitations was another stumbling block.
“Has Hasunuma made a move?” Mamiya asked.
“No. Same old, same old.”
They had been keeping Hasunuma under twenty-four-hour surveillance ever since the two bodies had been found. Unfortunately, his visit to the ATM happened before the team was in place. According to the surveillance team, Hasunuma spent most of his time in his Edogawa Ward apartment, with occasional forays outside to shop or to play pachinko. The scrap iron merchant where he had been working until a month before had gone bust, leaving him with no visible source of income.
Frustratingly, Hasunuma knew full well that he was being watched.
Mamiya crossed his arms and sighed heavily. “I don’t think we’re yet at the stage when we can ask him to voluntarily present himself at the station.”
“He’d probably claim that the body we found in his stepmother’s house has nothing to do with him.”
“Probably would,” grunted Mamiya sourly. “Thanks for the update. Keep at it.”
Kusanagi went back to his desk. He was looking through some files when Inspector Kishitani came rushing over.
“Chief, I’ve figured out what vehicle Hasunuma was making the most frequent use of three years ago. It was his employer’s minivan.” Kishitani presented Kusanagi with a printout of a small white van. “It was the same make as this.”
Kusanagi took the piece of paper, had a look, and grunted approvingly.
If Hasunuma had moved Saori Namiki’s body, then it would have required a vehicle to do so.
“At the time, Hasunuma was the only person using this vehicle; none of the other employees did. I went through the company’s vehicle use log.”
“Good work.” Kusanagi looked at the printout of the van with renewed interest.
“We found something else interesting,” Kishitani said.
“What?”
“The last known sighting of Saori Namiki on the security camera of a convenience store. We looked through the footage very carefully.” Kishitani placed two printouts on Kusanagi’s desk. One showed Saori Namiki walking along the street with her phone held up to her ear. The other a white minivan.
“Wha—? Is that...?” Kusanagi looked at the time stamp. The interval between the two pictures was less than one minute.
“This minivan drives by almost immediately after Saori Namiki has passed the convenience store. It’s not much of a stretch to assume it was following her.”
“Got the license number of the van?”
“Sure, we do.”
“Check it against the N-System data. Liaise with the Shizuoka Prefectural Police.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Kishitani, his tone buoyant. “Oh, and there’s one more thing.” He raised his index finger. “One of the recycling company employees told me something interesting: Over the last three years, Hasunuma would occasionally call him but the calls always came from pay phones.”
“From pay phones?”
“And they were always about the same thing. Hasunuma would ask whether the police had been there. That was his biggest worry. The calls were frequent in the first few months, he said, but they gradually tailed off, and he hasn’t heard from him in the last year.”
Kusanagi grunted his acknowledgement of Kishitani’s hard work.
“Hasunuma probably wanted to check that he wasn’t a suspect in the Saori Namiki missing-person case. He didn’t update his details on the official residents’ register for a while after moving out of his apartment. He was probably being careful, taking steps to prepare for the police coming after him. That would also explain why he used pay phones. When he decided that the coast was clear, he updated his entry in the residents’ register, and got his driving license renewed.”
“I think you’re right, sir,” Kishitani said.
It was yet another piece of evidence that made the cloud of suspicion surrounding Hasunuma even darker. But it, too, was only circumstantial.
Soon after that, the search results from N-System came back. A little over three years ago, the white minivan of Hasunuma’s employer had departed Kikuno, got onto the expressway at the nearest interchange and headed toward Shizuoka; about two hours later it reappeared, driving in the opposite direction. The timing corresponded perfectly with Saori Namiki’s disappearance.