“Yes, I remember. But I’ve not yet told you the most important thing.” Kusanagi took his smartphone off the table and put it back in the inside pocket of his jacket. “I told you we had found a gas tank. I didn’t tell you that it wasn’t just lying there; it was inside a forty-five-liter garbage bag.”
“A garbage bag?” Incredulity was etched onto Yukawa’s face.
“We checked the inside of the bag very carefully and found something else.” Kusanagi didn’t think the bartender was interested, but he still lowered his voice. “Hair. Just two strands of it, but still enough for analysis.”
“Hair?”
“We thought it might be Hasunuma’s hair and the results of the analysis confirm it.”
Yukawa scowled ferociously, muttered under his breath, then nodded slowly. “Oh, I get it. So that’s what this is all about.”
“Have you figured it out?”
“The killer slipped the garbage bag over Hasunuma’s head while he was asleep, pulled it tight around his neck, then opened it just enough to pump the helium in—”
“Exactly.” Kusanagi rapped the table with his knuckles. “Hasunuma would lose consciousness in ten seconds and die pretty soon thereafter. The pathologist confirmed our theory.”
Yukawa picked up his tumbler and took a sip of his whiskey and soda. He was gazing off into the middle distance.
“What’s wrong?” asked Kusanagi. “You don’t look happy. Is there something wrong scientifically?”
“No.” Kusanagi shook his head gently. “Scientifically, I have no problem with the theory. It’s just that I don’t understand what the murderer’s intentions were, why he would use that method...”
“If you’re going to go down that road, remember you were the one who deduced this method in the first place. Utsumi actually felt the same. ‘What’s the point of using such a grandiose and convoluted method to kill a person?’”
“The killing method I proposed was laden with significance. It was based on the hypothesis that the murder was an act of revenge by someone with a grudge against Hasunuma.”
“And what was its significance?”
“It implied an act of execution. I believe that the killer wanted to take the place of the state and to execute Hasunuma. There are different ways of executing people. In Japan, we use hanging. In America, they’ve got a long history with the electric chair, even if lethal injection is much more common now. There were also some states that until recently used the gas chamber. It’s a method of execution which involves confining a person in a small room and killing them by filling it with hydrocyanic acid gas.”
“‘Confining a person in a small room...’” A vivid image of Hasunuma lying dead in the tiny converted storeroom came to Kusanagi. “You think that the killer wanted to carry out the death sentence using the gas-chamber method?”
“It’s pure speculation on my part. Then again, as a method of killing, it has a second benefit.”
“What’s that?”
“The killer doesn’t need to lay so much as a finger on Hasunuma. With the door of the room locked and Hasunuma shut up inside, it’s possible to follow through with the murder even if he regains consciousness halfway through. Oh, and that reminds me, slipping a garbage bag over Hasunuma’s head and pumping helium into the bag is a very risky method, because there’s the danger of Hasunuma waking up and fighting back. If, however, he was sleeping so deeply that you didn’t need to worry about him waking up, then why use helium at all? Why not just tie up his wrists and ankles while he was unconscious and strangle him or stab him? Don’t you agree?”
Kusanagi groaned. Yukawa’s arguments were typically logical and persuasive.
“To be quite frank, I’ve no idea what the killer’s purpose was,” Kusanagi admitted reluctantly. “No doubt there was a reason why he adopted this particular method, but I don’t think we need to worry about that right now. Isn’t it better if we catch the guy and get him to tell us?”
Yukawa nodded simply. “That’s the most rational and reliable thing to do.”
“What’s important is that we now know that we can classify Hasunuma’s death as a murder. I told you I’d be staying here in Kikuno for a while. The decision has been made to set up an investigation task force at the Kikuno Police Station. Starting tomorrow, things are going to ratchet up a notch. I invited you out this evening because we’ll probably have fewer opportunities to discuss things in the days ahead.”
That makes sense, thought Yukawa, his expression softening. He picked up his tumbler. “At any rate, you’re now the bigwig chief inspector at Homicide.”
Kusanagi winced. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Here’s to solving the case.” Yukawa lifted up his tumbler.
As he reached for his glass to join in the toast, Kusanagi discovered he had finished his Guinness. He called out to the bartender to bring him another.
25
It was the day after Kusanagi met for drinks with Yukawa that the police managed to identify the fingerprints on the helium gas tank.
The fingerprints belonged to a man by the name of Morimoto. He was the owner of an auto repair business in North Kikuno.
Kusanagi got one of the investigators to look into Morimoto. He couldn’t find any link between Morimoto and Hasunuma; nor could he find any point of contact between Morimoto and Saori Namiki or anyone else in the Namiki family.
He did, however, uncover one very interesting fact. As a director of the North Kikuno Neighborhood Association, Morimoto helped run the festival singing contest on the day of the parade, and free balloons had been handed out to children at the contest venue.
Kusanagi decided that they needed to bring Morimoto in for questioning. He was willing to believe that Morimoto had nothing to do with the killing but his fingerprints were on the “murder weapon.” Kusanagi sent a few officers to pick Morimoto up in case he tried to make a run for it.
That proved unnecessary as Morimoto, although confused, came along quietly.
Kusanagi assigned Kishitani to question Morimoto. While that interview was in progress, he joined Utsumi and Muto in the conference room to prep for their first big investigation meeting.
“It doesn’t look as if we’ll get much joy from the security cameras near the crime scene,” said Muto, despondently. “We found one in a metered parking lot nearby, but there were no suspicious vehicles in the footage.”
Kusanagi groaned and looked at Utsumi, who was sitting beside him. “What about the ‘likely suspects’? Did you manage to track their movements on security-camera footage?”
“Partly, yes.” Utsumi swiveled her laptop around so that Kusanagi could see the screen.
It was a still image from an outdoor security camera that showed a large number of pedestrians walking in opposing directions.
“This particular camera is near the end point of the parade. I believe that this man in the navy-blue jacket is Tomoya Takagaki.” Utsumi pointed at a section of the screen.
Although Kusanagi had only ever seen a photograph of Tomoya Takagaki and the resolution of the CCTV image was on the low side, he was pretty sure that Utsumi’s identification of him was correct. He was looking off to the side onto the street, rather than in front of him, which suggested that he was walking and watching the parade at the same time. The time stamp was just after two in the afternoon.