Tomoya felt lost. He buried his head in his hands. In front of him, he seemed to see a deep, dark abyss.
When he glanced off to the side, his eyes met Utsumi’s. She nodded tenderly, giving him a look that seemed to say, I know exactly how you feel. He had always thought of her as coldhearted and hardheaded; now, however, she could have been the Virgin Mary.
Tomoya drew himself up and looked Kusanagi in the eye.
“You promise you’ll keep this secret from my mother and my colleagues at work?”
“I promise,” Kusanagi replied emphatically.
38
Tomoya Takagaki’s statement went something like this.
One evening, a few days before the parade, he had just left Namiki-ya, when Tojima called out to him from his car. “I’ve got something important I need to talk with you about.” They drove a certain distance away, at which point Tojima made his surprising pitch. He wanted to strike Hasunuma a hammerblow, and he needed Tomoya’s help.
“We’re not going to kill the guy,” Tojima said. “But we are going to punish him — sanction him, if you like.”
Tojima didn’t go into any detail of how Hasunuma was going to be punished. “It’s better that you don’t know,” was all he said. “If everything ends up going according to plan, then I’ll tell you. Until then, I want you to act in good faith and accept being kept at arm’s length. Everyone’s agreed to those terms.”
Tojima couldn’t reveal who “everyone” was, he explained.
“If you insist that I reveal their names, then that’s it. If that’s what you want, you should get out of this car right now and go home. And this little talk we’re having now, it never happened.”
Tomoya could guess easily enough: It had to be Yutaro Namiki and Naoki Niikura.
“Can I decide after you’ve told me what it is you want me to do?” Tomoya asked.
“Of course you can,” Tojima replied.
What Tojima went on to say was nothing like what Tomoya had been expecting. On the day of the parade, Tojima wanted him to transport an item hidden inside one of Team Kikuno’s props from one place to another.
“When I say prop, I mean it’s a treasure chest. The theme of this year’s performance is Treasure Island, so it’s going to feature five treasure chests. They’re all different colors; the item we need will be hidden inside the silver chest. Once Team Kikuno gets to the finish line, we need you to remove the item from the chest, transport it somewhere in a truck, then return the truck to its original location. That’s all you have to do.” Tojima paused. “If you agree to do the job, I can share a few more details with you.”
From Tojima’s description, the job didn’t sound especially difficult. Tojima offered him a day to consider, but Tomoya felt that dithering would be an insult to Saori’s memory.
“I’m in,” he said.
Come the actual day, Tomoya watched the parade with his two coworkers. They briefly went their separate ways just after 3 P.M., when the parade ended. It was Tomoya himself who suggested that they do so.
He went to the finish line and looked for Maya Miyazawa. Tojima had advised him to go and say hello to her, so he’d have an alibi.
Having found and exchanged a few words with her, Tomoya headed for Yamabe Shoten, a rice shop about one hundred feet farther along the road. The shop was closed for the day. A minitruck was in the parking lot to one side of it. On the flatbed of the truck were a trolley, two cardboard boxes, and a white plastic bag. Each of the cardboard boxes contained six two-liter bottles of water, while the plastic bag contained one of the official staff jackets worn by volunteers helping with the parade.
Tomoya slipped on the jacket, loaded the two cardboard boxes onto the trolley, and headed for the nearby elementary school. The area was full of people bustling about wearing the same jacket he had on. Nobody gave him a second glance.
He went to the schoolyard and looked around for the silver chest. It didn’t take him long to find it. There was no one nearby.
As he walked up to the chest, he slipped on the leather gloves he had in his pocket, then, after checking that no one was watching, he opened the side panels of the chest as Tojima had taught him to do.
Inside, he found a large cardboard box held in place with two straps. When he slid it out and put it to one side, he was surprised at how much it weighed.
Tojima had told him that the box contained liquid nitrogen. (Tojima hadn’t wanted to reveal the contents to Tomoya, but he was worried that keeping him in the dark could be dangerous.)
“The cardboard box is not hermetically sealed. A sealed box would swell and burst because liquid nitrogen is gasifying all the time. Be sure to wear leather gloves when you carry the thing. That’s not just to avoid leaving fingerprints; it’s also a precaution against getting any liquid nitrogen on your hands, should the container topple over inside the box. Cotton or cloth gloves aren’t good enough; liquid nitrogen will penetrate them and give you frostbite.”
The leather gloves he used had been a Christmas present from his mother.
He put the two boxes full of bottled water into the chest, retied the straps, and put the side panels back in place. Then he lifted the cardboard box he had removed from the chest onto the trolley and went back the way he had come. No one paid him any attention. After looking around to check that no one was watching, he took off the staff jacket.
When he got back to the rice merchant’s, he loaded the cardboard box onto the flatbed of the truck, then went to check the front number plate. The car key was stuck to the back of it with tape, just as Tojima had said it would be. He fired up the minitruck and headed for the hut where Hasunuma lived. When he got there, he dumped the box outside the door, got back into the minitruck, and returned to the rice shop. He put the key back behind the license plate and set out for the place where he had agreed to rendezvous with his friends, clutching a plastic bag with the staff jacket inside. On the way, he shoved the bag into the basket of an abandoned bike.
After spending a certain amount of time at the beer bar with his coworkers, he then headed off to Namiki-ya by himself. He wanted to find out what had happened. Had Hasunuma’s punishment gone to plan?
A couple of the regular customers showed up after he got there, followed by Tojima, then the Niikuras. None of them would tell him anything.
Eventually, a friend of Maya Miyazawa’s came into the restaurant. He looked rather shell-shocked. He gave Miyazawa a shocking piece of news: Hasunuma was dead.
Tomoya looked at Tojima.
Tojima refused to make eye contact.
Tomoya still had no idea what had happened that day and who — other than himself — had done what. Now that he had made his confession, he was eager to learn the whole truth as soon as possible.
39
When he had finished reading the statement, Director Mamiya looked up at Kusanagi. The crotchety expression on his face turned into a smile as he dropped the document onto his desk. “Good job.”
“Thank you, sir.” Kusanagi nodded.
“Utsumi told me that you called Takagaki’s bluff big-time.”
“Oh, the business with the leather gloves?”
“Yes. She told me Forensics hadn’t actually reported finding any glove prints.”