“Hold on,” Kusanagi raised his hand, cutting him off. “Are you telling me you thought of all of that right there on the spot?”
“Yes. You don’t believe me?”
“No … it’s just that I’m impressed you could come up with such a plan so quickly.”
“It’s really not much,” Ishigami said, his smile fading. “I knew he wanted desperately to see her. All I had to do was use that desire against him. It wasn’t difficult.”
“Well, maybe not for you.” Kusanagi licked his lips. “So, what happened then?”
“Before he left, I gave him my cell phone number. I told him to call me if he couldn’t find the apartment. Typically, people suspect something when strangers show them that kind of kindness, but he didn’t suspect a thing. I don’t think he was very smart, to tell the truth.”
“Very few people would imagine someone they’d only just met was planning to kill them.”
“If you ask me, he should have suspected something because it was the first time we’d met. In any case, he took the fake address, put it in his pocket, and practically skipped off down the hallway. When I saw that he had left, I went back inside my place and began making preparations.” Ishigami paused and slowly reached for the teacup on the table. He took a couple long gulps of the lukewarm tea.
“What sort of preparations?”
“Nothing too elaborate. I changed into some more comfortable clothes, and waited. I also spent some time thinking about the best way to kill him. After running through several options, I chose strangulation. I reasoned that would be the most reliable method. There’s no telling how much blood I might have got on me if I tried to stab or bludgeon him to death. Nor was I sure I could do it with just one blow. Also, strangulation made the choice of a murder weapon much simpler. I knew I needed something strong, so I went with the shielded electrical cord to a kotatsu.”
“Which you carried to the scene of the crime?”
Ishigami nodded. “I left the house around ten o’clock. I had the actual cord with me, as well as a box cutter and a disposable lighter. On my way to the station, I noticed a blue plastic sheet someone had thrown out in the garbage, so I folded that and brought it with me, too. I got off the train at Mizue and took a taxi to the Old Edogawa.”
“Mizue Station? Not Shinozaki?”
“Of course not,” Ishigami replied without hesitation. “I didn’t want to run into the man by mistake. I got out of the taxi some distance away from the place I’d told him about, too. I knew that, in order to retain the element of surprise, I needed to avoid being seen until the time was right.”
“So what did you do after you got out of the taxi?”
“Taking care not to be seen by anyone, I headed toward our meeting place. Not that I needed to be too careful. There was hardly anyone on the street.” Ishigami took a sip of tea. “Right after I arrived at the river bank, my cell phone began to ring. It was him. He told me he’d arrived at the address I’d given him, but couldn’t find the apartment building. So I asked him where he was, and he told me in some detail—all the while not realizing that I was approaching his location as we talked. I told him I would check the address again and call him back. By that time I knew exactly where he was. I could see him sitting—sprawled out, really—by a clump of grass on the riverbank. I walked up slowly, so as not to make a sound. He didn’t notice me at all until I was right behind him. But by then, I already had the cord around his neck. He resisted, of course, but I had the advantage, and he went limp quickly. It was a lot easier than I’d expected, to be honest.” Ishigami’s eyes fell back down to his cup. “Might I have another cup of tea?”
Kishitani stood and poured him another cup from the pot. Ishigami nodded in thanks.
“The victim was a healthy man in his forties. I wouldn’t think he’d be that easy to strangle if he resisted with all his strength,” Kusanagi ventured.
Ishigami’s expression didn’t change. Only his eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m the instructor at the judo club at my school. Coming from behind, it’s quite easy to overpower a man, even if he’s bigger than you.”
Kusanagi nodded, his eyes going to Ishigami’s ears. They were puffy, cauliflower ears—the sure sign of a judo wrestler. There were more than a few men on the police force with ears like his.
“What did you do after you killed him?” he asked.
“I knew I had to conceal the identity of the body. I thought that if you police knew who he was, you would surely suspect Yasuko Hanaoka. First, I removed his clothing with the box cutter. Then I smashed his face.” Ishigami’s tone was cold and even. “That is, I laid him on his back, put the plastic sheet over his face, and struck him several times with a large rock. I don’t remember how many times I hit him, but I’d say a dozen at least. Then I used the lighter to burn off his fingerprints. After all that, I took his clothes and left the scene. A little way from the bank, I found an oil drum, so I put the clothes in there and burned them. The fire leapt a lot higher than I’d expected, and I started to worry that someone might notice, so I decided to just leave them there. I walked back to the road, caught a cab, and went to Tokyo Station, where I got in another cab for home. It was a little after midnight when I returned to my apartment.” He let out a drawn-out sigh. “That’s it. That’s what I did. You can find the electrical cord, the box cutter, and the disposable lighter in my apartment.”
Kusanagi glanced at Kishitani out of the corner of his eye; his assistant was writing furiously. The detective set a cigarette to his lips. He lit it, blew out a puff of smoke, and stared at Ishigami. The man’s face was expressionless once more, his eyes a total blank.
There weren’t any gaping holes in the story. Everything he’d said about the body’s condition and the scene of the crime matched what the police knew. Since none of the details had been released publicly, it was easier to think that he was telling the truth than to believe the alternative.
“Did you tell Yasuko Hanaoka that you killed him?” Kusanagi asked.
“Why would I?” Ishigami replied. “I couldn’t have her slipping up and telling someone else. Women are terrible at keeping secrets.”
“So you haven’t talked to her at all about what happened?”
“Not at all. And once you started sniffing around, I took great pains to make as little contact with her as possible, so as not to attract suspicion.”
“You said you had a way of communicating secretly with Ms. Hanaoka before. Could you tell me about that now?”
“There were several ways we communicated. For one, she would talk to me.”
“You mean, you would meet somewhere?”
“Nothing like that. People might see us. She would talk in her own apartment, and I would use a device to listen to her.”
“What sort of device?”
“By placing a sound amplifier on the wall between our apartments, I could hear her voice.”
Kishitani’s pen stopped in mid-stroke and he looked up. Kusanagi knew what had stopped him.
“You mean, you were eavesdropping on her?”
Ishigami’s brow furrowed with surprise and he shook his head. “It wasn’t eavesdropping. She was talking to me.”
“So Ms. Hanaoka knew about this listening device?”
“She might not have known about the device, but she was facing the wall between our apartments when she spoke.”
“So that’s why you say she was talking to you?”
“That’s right. With her daughter there, she couldn’t talk to me openly, you see. So she pretended to be talking to her daughter, when she was really sending me messages.”
The cigarette in Kusanagi’s hand had burned halfway down to the filter, but he hadn’t flicked it once. He dropped it in the ashtray. His eyes met Kishitani’s. The junior detective was scratching his neck, perplexed.