“And you just happened to catch one on the night of the tenth.”
“What do you mean by that? I know that’s the night your murder took place, but it wasn’t a particularly special night for me.”
“Of course.” Kusanagi closed his notepad and stood. “Sorry for taking your time.”
“Again, I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance.”
“Not at all. We’re just covering the bases.”
The two of them walked out of the conference room together. Ishigami saw the detective to the main entrance.
“Seen much of Yukawa lately?” Kusanagi asked as they walked.
“No, not at all,” Ishigami answered. “How about you? You talk to him now and then, right?”
“Not recently. I’ve been too busy. You know, the three of us should get together sometime. I hear from Yukawa that you enjoy a drink now and then?” He motioned with his hand as if tilting a glass.
“I’d be happy to, but shouldn’t that wait until you’ve solved this case of yours?”
“Probably, yes, but a man has to get out sometimes. I’ll give you a ring.”
“All right. I’ll be looking forward to it, then.”
“You do that,” the detective said, turning to walk out the door.
Ishigami returned to the hallway and watched him through a window. Kusanagi was talking on his cell phone as he walked out to the road. His expression hadn’t changed.
Ishigami thought about what his visit meant. They must have had a reason to turn their suspicions toward him. What would that be? He hadn’t sensed anything of the sort the last time he’d met Kusanagi.
Based on the questions he asked, Kusanagi was a still long way from the truth. He was basically shooting in the dark. Perhaps Ishigami’s lack of an alibi had given him a new direction. But if so, so be it. Ishigami had planned for this, too.
The problem was—
The image of Manabu Yukawa’s face flitted across his mind. How much of the truth had the physicist been able to sniff out? And how much of that truth did he really want to expose?
Ishigami remembered something Yasuko had told him the other day on the phone. Apparently, Yukawa had asked her what she thought of him—of Ishigami. And it sounded like he had known about Ishigami’s fondness for Yasuko.
The mathematician recalled his various discussions with Yukawa but couldn’t remember a single careless word or gesture that might have tipped him off. So how had his old friend noticed?
Ishigami turned and began to walk toward the teachers’ room. He ran into the office assistant in the hallway on the way there.
“The detective leave already?”
“Just now, yeah.”
“So aren’t you going home, Mr. Ishigami?”
“No, I remembered something I have to do first.”
Leaving the assistant to wonder what the detective had wanted, Ishigami returned quickly to the teachers’ room. Sitting down at his desk there, he reached into a box he kept beneath it and pulled out several files. These weren’t class files. They were part of the results of his work over the last several years on a particularly difficult mathematics problem.
He placed them in his bag with the test sheets and left the room.
“How many times do I have to tell you that in order to examine something you have to do more than just look at it? You can’t simply say you were satisfied with an experiment because you got the results you were expecting. I don’t care how you feel about the experiment. And not everything was really expected, was it? I want you to really look at the experiment and discover something in it that has meaning for you. Just—think a little more before you write, please?”
It was rare for Yukawa to be so obviously irritated. Shaking his head, he thrust the report back at the student who stood mute before him. The young man bowed his head and left the room.
“Don’t tell me you get angry, too?” Kusanagi remarked.
“I’m not angry. He wasn’t taking his work seriously, so I gave him a little direction, that’s all.” Yukawa stood and busied himself making a mug of instant coffee. “So, find anything out?”
“I looked into Ishigami’s alibi. Which is to say, I went and talked to him.”
“A frontal assault?” Yukawa turned from the sink, the large mug in his hand. “And? How did he react?”
“He claims he was at home for the whole night.”
Yukawa frowned and shook his head. “I asked you how he reacted. Not what he told you.”
“Well, he didn’t seem particularly flustered, if that’s what you mean. Then again, he was warned about my visit before he saw me, so he would have had a little time to get himself in order.”
“Did he seem surprised that you were asking about his alibi?”
“He didn’t come out and ask me why, no. But then again, I didn’t ask him all that directly, either.”
“Knowing him, he knew you’d be coming for his alibi sooner or later,” Yukawa said, half to himself. He took a sip of coffee. “So he was home that night?”
“Yeah. Had a fever, apparently, so he skipped his classes the following morning.” Kusanagi laid the work schedule he’d received from the school office on the table.
Yukawa walked over and sat. He picked up the schedule.
“The next morning … hmm.”
“After the murder, he would have needed time to take care of things.”
“What about the lady from the lunch shop? You know where she was that morning?”
“Of course. Yasuko Hanaoka went to work as usual on the eleventh. And, while we’re on the subject, her daughter went to school as usual, too. Neither of them was even late.”
Yukawa placed the work schedule back down on the table and crossed his arms. “By ‘time to take care of things,’ what exactly do you think he had to do?”
“Well, dispose of the murder weapon, for one thing.”
“It wouldn’t take him more than ten hours to do that.”
“Ten hours?”
“The murder took place on the night of the tenth. If he had to miss school the following morning, that means he needed more than ten hours to ‘take care of things,’ as you say.”
“Well, he would have needed time to sleep.”
“I doubt anyone could sleep if they had a murder to conceal. And if, after concealing it, they ended up without any time to sleep, they’d just go without. He’d have gone to work for sure, even if he had to prop his eyelids open to do it. Showing up on time but exhausted would raise far less suspicion than not coming in at all.”
“Then there must have been some reason he had to rest.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Yukawa said, lifting his mug.
Kusanagi carefuly folded the work schedule on the table.
“There’s something I have to ask you. Why did you start to suspect Ishigami was involved? I’m just not sure how to proceed without knowing what piqued your interest.”
“That’s a strange thing for you to say. Didn’t you figure out, entirely on your own, that he was fond of Yasuko Hanaoka? Why should my opinion matter at all?”
“Well, it does. See, in order to report all this to my boss, I can’t just say I started to watch Ishigami based on a whim.”
“Can’t you say you were looking into people connected with Ms. Hanaoka, and the mathematician Ishigami’s name came up?”
“I did. And I looked into their relationship. The thing is, I haven’t been able to find a single scrap of evidence they’re closer than they are letting on.”
Mug still in hand, Yukawa began to laugh so hard his whole body shook. “I’m not surprised!”
“What? Why? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing much. It’s just I wasn’t expecting there to be anything between them at all. In fact, I guarantee you that no matter how hard you look, you won’t find even a trace of a relationship.”