“That thing? Never used it. He just came and dumped it on me. It just gets in the way,” she replied, the furrows on her brow deepening.
“Where is it?” they asked.
“In the tatami room at the back of the house,” she said, leading them inside. Kusanagi was dumbfounded: The place was about as far as you could get from a traditional serene Japanese room; it was more like a storeroom crammed from floor to ceiling with stuff. Right at the back of it all was a refrigerator. And it was definitely the one from the photograph.
They immediately impounded it and sent the refrigerator to the crime lab for analysis. Minute flecks of blood and pieces of flesh were found, and using DNA analysis, it was determined that Yuna Motohashi was the source of both. When the news was announced, the whole investigation task force broke into a cheer.
Kusanagi wanted to beat his chest and say, Look at me. A newbie in Homicide and I’ve already got a scalp on my belt.
Things, however, didn’t develop as expected.
Kanichi Hasunuma denied any involvement in the crime.
When they pressed him about blood and tissue residue from Yuna Motohashi being found in his refrigerator, he simply said, “No idea how it got there.” When they pressed him about his reasons for getting a new refrigerator, he simply said that the other one had gotten old.
Tatara went ahead and ordered Hasunuma’s arrest, despite his stonewalling. They were confident that with him in custody, extracting a confession would only be a matter of time.
Normally, they would have arrested him on several charges, including the unlawful disposal of a corpse or for mutilating a dead body, while they tried to get a confession. But not in this case. The statute of limitations, which was three years for both crimes, had already run out. The only charge they could arrest him on was murder.
But Hasunuma didn’t capitulate or confess. No matter how much they blustered and threatened, he refused to say anything.
“Do whatever it takes. Just get me the evidence I need,” thundered Tatara. His subordinates redoubled their efforts.
Through diligent sleuthing, Kusanagi and his colleagues turned up several new pieces of evidence suggestive of Hasunuma’s guilt. For instance, Hasunuma had rented a car two days after making use of the industrial incinerator. The distance on the odometer was almost exactly equivalent to the return trip from his home to the place where the remains had been found. When they searched Hasunuma’s apartment, the investigators discovered an old shovel wrapped up in newspaper. Analysis of the soil stuck to the shovel’s blade revealed that it had the same characteristics as the soil where the bones had been found.
They found more new information. But all of it was circumstantial evidence, no single piece of it providing decisive confirmation of Hasunuma’s guilt.
Some members of the task force suggested a compromise. How about getting Hasunuma to accept a charge of manslaughter — or even the lighter charge of involuntary manslaughter — instead of murder?
The idea infuriated Tatara, who was violently opposed to offering deals to criminals. He rejected it out of hand. “The fact that Hasunuma refuses to say anything is tantamount to an admission of guilt. We’ve absolutely got to indict him on a murder charge,” Tatara said.
In the end, they sent the case to the public prosecutor without managing to find a single piece of conclusive physical evidence. It was up to the prosecutor’s office to decide what to do next.
The prosecutor decided to go for an indictment. They probably assumed that the sheer volume of circumstantial evidence guaranteed that he would be convicted.
But the trial didn’t go as expected.
On his first day in court, Hasunuma denied the charges. His denials were the first and last words of any significance that he uttered throughout the trial. Thereafter, he stayed resolutely silent. Whatever the prosecutor asked him, his only response was: “I have nothing to say.”
As the trial went on, Kusanagi began to hear whisperings that Hasunuma might be found innocent.
I just can’t believe it, Kusanagi thought. Sure, the evidence is circumstantial, but with so much of it, you can’t tell me there isn’t enough to convict.
The trial focused on two issues. First, was Yuna Motohashi’s death the result of murder? And second, could a charge of murder be proven through the accumulation of circumstantial evidence, even though neither the motive nor the method of the murder was known?
Hasunuma had burned the girl’s corpse and buried what was left. Any normal person could see that he must have murdered her — but that wasn’t, apparently, how the justice system operated. If there was even the tiniest possibility that Hasunuma hadn’t killed the girl, then the murder charge would no longer stand up.
The day when the verdict was announced was bitterly cold. Kusanagi was at a local police station when he heard the outcome.
The verdict? Not guilty.
4
Kusanagi shook his head as he contemplated the burned-out ruin. “Hard to believe this was once a house.”
“Very hard, sir,” said Detective Utsumi, who was standing beside him.
The place looked less like a burned-out house than a refuse incineration plant. A vast jumble of wood, metal, and plastic had been charred and fused together. The fire probably released not only a cloud of filthy smoke but also a lot of toxic gas. Kusanagi pitied the firefighters who been sent in to extinguish the blaze.
Kusanagi and Utsumi came to inspect the site along with the prefectural police before he took control of the joint investigation task force.
“I’ve driven by this place more times than I can count. Unless you knew, you’d never have guessed that there was a house behind all the garbage.” The speaker was Detective Ueno. He was there as their guide. He looked young — he was probably in his early thirties — and was built like an ox.
“Was it that bad?” Kusanagi asked.
The young policeman nodded.
“The garden was packed with piles of random trash: broken TVs and radios, bits of furniture, mattresses, quilts, you name it. Plus, bundles of newspapers and books — hundreds of the damn things. My guess is that people took to dumping their trash here rather than having it hauled away.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?” Utsumi asked.
“Search me.” Ueno tilted his head to one side. “When we interviewed the local people, they told us it had been in that state for a decade or so before the fire. The woman wasn’t interested in getting on with her neighbors: When they complained about the smell, she simply ignored them. When the municipal authorities offered to help her dispose of the stuff, if it was all proving a bit too much for her, she sent them packing. ‘This is my property and I don’t feel like throwing it away. Just leave me in peace.’”
Listening to Detective Ueno’s explanation, Kusanagi tried to recall the face of Yoshie Hasunuma from nineteen years before. She was something of an oddball even then but had only become more idiosyncratic with the passing of time, apparently. He wondered if her son’s arrest might have had something to do with it.
“According to the report, no one remembers seeing Yoshie Hasunuma for roughly six years. Didn’t anyone think that was odd?” Kusanagi asked.
“They discussed it, but it never went much beyond, ‘You don’t see that Mrs. Hasunuma around much lately.’ I imagine no one wanted to get involved.”
“What about the utilities: the water and the electricity?”
“The bills were all paid on time. The old woman’s bank account remained open and the charges were automatically deducted. Since she wasn’t actually using any water or electricity, the charges were minimal.”