Masumura felt that he had gotten a glimpse into the evil recesses of the mind that had killed Yuna.
“You really know your stuff,” said Masumura, stifling the anger that was rising in his gorge. “Speaking from experience?”
Masumura was hoping to get Hasunuma to say something about Yuna’s murder. He just grinned and sidestepped the question with a noncommittal “Who knows?”
After that, the two men took to exchanging a word or two whenever their paths crossed. Hasunuma was standoffish with all the other employees, but with Masumura, for some reason, he lowered his guard. Perhaps spending time with someone who’d ended up in jail out of sheer dumb honesty gave him a renewed appreciation for his own ingenuity and sense of superiority. Although this only served to fan the flames of Masumura’s hatred of Hasunuma, he worked hard to hide his true feelings. He focused instead on getting friendlier with Hasunuma. The ultimate goal was to get him to open up about Yuna’s murder.
After around six months, the two men started going drinking together. Although Hasunuma seldom spoke directly about himself, he did let slip the occasional detail about his background.
Apparently, he loathed his father, who’d been a police officer.
“My dad despised ordinary civilians. He was quite open about it. He was the original fuck-you cop. When he snapped his fingers, he expected everyone to jump to it. The guy was a moron.”
Hasunuma went on.
“When he got hammered at home, he liked to brag to me. ‘Today, I got this guy to spill his guts. We knew he was guilty, but we had no evidence; we were stumped. So what do we do? We arrest him on another charge, stick him in the interview room, give him the third degree, and get a confession out of him that way.’ My dad always used to say: ‘Confessions are the king of evidence. I extract the confessions, so I matter more than any damn prosecutor.’ You know what that made me think? That if I ever got investigated by this bunch of clowns, I’d rather die than say a single word to them.”
So that’s what this is all about. Everything began to make sense. Hasunuma’s father had given him the speech about confessions being the king of evidence one too many times. From it, he had learned that silence and dogged denial would see you safely through. And he had put that knowledge to work when he was arrested.
It wasn’t long after that that Masumura got Hasunuma to say something definitive. They were having a drink when the subject of detention centers happened to come up.
“Those places are awful. Tiny cells. Boiling in summer, freezing in winter. What the hell right have the cops got to treat people like that?”
Masumura’s response was reflexive. “What did you do?”
“What?”
“You were in the detention center? So what did they arrest you for?”
Hasunuma had never spoken about his own arrest before.
He seemed to hesitate a moment, then said “murder” in a quiet voice. “Like you, it’s ancient history.”
“So who’d you kill?”
Hasunuma didn’t answer the question right away. With a self-important air, he deliberately poured some sake into his little sake cup, which he drained in one gulp. Only then did he continue.
“The factory I worked at — the boss’s daughter went missing. They found her remains a few years later. They arrested me on suspicion of murder.”
“Did you kill her?” Masumura’s heart was beating rapidly in his chest. “Did you?”
Hasunuma shot Masumura a sideways glance, then looked off into the middle distance.
“I was indicted and sent to trial. But I never said a word more than I had to. My lawyer said that was fine. We went through the motions and — long story short — I was found not guilty.”
“That’s good news for you. But what really happened? Did you do it? I won’t blab. You can tell me about it,” wheedled Masumura, working hard to stifle his rage.
Hasunuma leered. He started to chuckle, his shoulders moving up and down.
“You want the truth? What does true even mean? I was declared not guilty by a court of law. That’s all you need to know. They even paid me compensation for the time I spent in detention!”
He made a gesture as if zipping his lips shut. “That’s all I’m going to say about that,” he said.
Thereafter, no matter how much Masumura tried, Hasunuma wouldn’t be drawn out on the subject. “Just give it a rest, okay?” he would say with a scowl. Eventually, Masumura gave up asking. The last thing he wanted was to needle Hasunuma to the point of driving him away.
He’d managed to get results already. Hasunuma had spoken about the Yuna Motohashi case for the first time. As long as Masumura stayed on this same path, he should get the truth from him at some point.
However, that plan got thrown off course. Hasunuma abruptly stopped coming to work one day. He called the boss to say that he was quitting. When Masumura went around to his apartment, it had already been cleared out. When he tried calling his cell, he couldn’t get through because his phone contract had been canceled.
Masumura asked around, but none of his coworkers knew where Hasunuma had gone. He hadn’t given any reason for quitting to the boss, either.
Masumura was completely nonplussed. If he’d known that this was going to happen, he’d have taken his revenge sooner. He felt faint with regret at the thought of the opportunity he’d allowed to slip through his fingers.
A few days later, he got a call on his cell. It was from a pay phone. When he picked up, he was surprised to hear Hasunuma’s voice at the other end of the line.
“What happened to you? Disappearing like that.”
“I’ve got my reasons. Any cops show up at work?”
“Cops? No, not that I’ve heard.”
“Good to hear.”
“What’s going on? What have you done?”
Hasunuma snickered.
“Nothing much. Let’s leave it there.”
Hasunuma sounded as though he was about to hang up.
“Just a minute,” Masumura said hastily. “Where are you?”
“Can’t tell you that right now. Be in touch. Bye,” said Hasunuma. He ended the call.
Hasunuma phoned Masumura on multiple occasions after that. He always used a pay phone and the first question he asked was always whether anything “funny” had happened at the firm.
The calls became less and less frequent over time. And the intervals between them went from a few days, to a few weeks, and finally to several months. Masumura was worried about losing track of Hasunuma entirely. He was still using pay phones and hadn’t yet revealed where he was living.
Three years went by, then, one day, when Masumura went into work, a couple of men were waiting for him. They were detectives. They showed him a mug shot. Did he know this man? they asked. It was Hasunuma.
When he said that, yes, he knew him, they bombarded him with questions.
Their questions mainly focused on the time when Hasunuma quit his job and disappeared. What had he talked about? Was there anything unusual about him? Had he been in touch since then? After a certain amount of hemming and hawing, Masumura came clean and told them about the sporadic phone calls he was getting.
The detectives seemed to be pleased. They thanked him for his help and went on their way without ever revealing what crime they were investigating.
He found out soon enough when the case became a major news item. The remains of a girl had been found in the ruins of a burned-out house in Shizuoka prefecture. One of Masumura’s coworkers had heard that the girl’s family ran a restaurant in Kikuno.