“I saw it on television, but what is that about?”
“The bullet that man was shot in the head with and the bullet that was retrieved from the cat’s body are the same type.”
“Oh, is that so? You mean. . No way, come on! You think someone murdered that cat?”
“Ah, well, listen to what I have to say. This won’t take much longer,” he said, stamping out the cigarette he had dropped on the ground and lighting a new one. I still had the feeling that, as he did so, he was gauging the state I was in. When he’d suddenly brought up the Arakawa murder just now, I suspected that had been his intention all along.
“Would you mind if we moved to a coffee shop or someplace? I doubt you would agree to come down for questioning voluntarily — and that wouldn’t really work for me, either. But if you refuse now, I’ll come back again tomorrow, and I’ll go to your school as well. So wouldn’t it be easier just to dispel any suspicion right here and now?”
He said this to me and then, without waiting for my response, he continued, “I’ll wait a few minutes while you get dressed.”
Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do but go with the man to the coffee shop. I felt an almost paroxysmal urge to shoot him with the gun, but I knew what it would mean for me if I did. I closed the door and put the gun in the back of the closet, in case something happened. If he came inside the apartment, I figured he would probably find it anyway, but I didn’t have much time. Then again, he still didn’t have any definitive proof that the gun was in my possession. And without evidence, there was no reason to think that he would be able to search my apartment. And, when I thought about it, there shouldn’t be any such evidence. If that scanty eyewitness testimony was the only thing they had against me, then I found it hard to imagine that it would lead them to me.
When we got to the coffee shop the man ordered two coffees, and with a slight smile on his face he lit a cigarette. There was something fundamentally irritating about this guy. Of course I would feel that way, in my situation, but even putting that aside, I doubted that I would enjoy his company.
“Uh, could I see your badge one more time?”
“Why? What for?”
“No, please forgive me but, it’s just to be sure you’re really a detective. At first, I wondered if you were a conman, or soliciting for something. Still, I never would have thought I’d be suspected of such things.”
He had been smiling, but now he looked a little impatient. I had said that so as not to give him the upper hand, and I felt like it might have worked. He opened his badge to where his photo was, and held it out for me to see. I asked the waitress who was passing by for a pen and paper, and wrote down the man’s name.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Oh, just in case, if anything happens. I’d hate if you were to take an unreasonable attitude.”
“. . So that’s how it is,” he said with a slight frown, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Well, why don’t we get started? I’m going to speak frankly now. No use talking in circles,” he said, taking another drag.
I decided to look in the direction of the clock on the wall of the shop, with an uninterested expression.
“To begin with, we didn’t retrieve a bullet from the cat. I wanted to see what your reaction would be, so I made it up. But there was indeed a report that gunshots were heard. The cat’s body was found in a tragic state, and the eyewitness report about you — those parts were true. But we don’t know that the cat was shot with a gun. Unfortunately for us. The body has already been cremated by the shelter, so there won’t be any bullets coming from it. There’s no way to know. As for the Arakawa murder, well, when an incident like that happens, we set up a task force, and even though the one for this case is extremely small-scale, well, we’re investigating it as a homicide that’s related to organized crime. And actually, we already have several people in custody. I’m in charge of that investigation.”
“So what are you saying? I’m a student — this has absolutely nothing to do with me, does it?”
“Well, just listen,” he said, taking a sip of the coffee that the waitress had brought over. “You see, at first, I thought that this — the guy down by the Arakawa — I thought this case was a suicide. Of course, I happened to be the only one who thought so. The dead body, the way it was found. . it struck me as unnatural for a homicide. Usually, gunshot murder victims are hit in the chest. Several shots to the chest. Well, most of the time. But this victim had one shot in the temple. A single bullet to the right temple. And, the guy died — well, the estimated time of death, anyway — between six and ten o’clock at night. By then it would already be dark around there. And what’s more, you can be sure that none of those small-time yakuza thugs have the skill to strike with a single shot to the temple. No way. But the task force isn’t stupid. Nope, and even if they were, they could figure that one out. Yup, this was absolutely a murder. The killer held a gun to the terrified victim’s temple, and fired. That’s what they think happened. Of course, it’s certainly not an impossibility. Except these guys don’t kill people like they do on TV. I’ve never seen a dead body like that one. Shootings, you know, by their nature, they create horrific crime scenes. They shoot the hell out of each other, without hitting the vital organs, and they die agonizing deaths. You can tell from the evidence, the scene shows that they were writhing in pain. It’s never such a clean — well, it may be a strange thing to say but — such a clean crime scene. When someone is shot with a gun, they don’t die right away. It takes a long time before they breathe their last.”
The man had been watching me the entire time he was speaking. I had looked away, but still, his gaze made me anxious and there was nothing I could do about it. I was desperately trying to anticipate which direction his story would go next, and how it would be connected to me. Attempting to steady my fraying nerves, I drank my coffee and took a drag from my cigarette.
“There’s one more thing I have my suspicions about. There was blood spatter on the fingers of the man’s right hand. It was just trace amounts. Of course, it could have easily happened to get there. However, based on that, I had more or less decided that he had killed himself. Up to that point, it had been a hunch, but I could imagine him holding the gun in his right hand, pointing it at his temple. But once the police see any signs of organized crime, they are quick to make that connection. It’s just force of habit. Especially in a small-time case like this one, with a small task force — it’s all the more likely. But here’s how I saw it. This guy committed suicide, and then by chance, someone happened to come by the scene — right? Totally by accident, they happened to come by the scene, probably someone who was just going about their business as usual, and they made off with the gun that was left lying there — that’s what I think. The river runs between these two neighborhoods. I’ve been thinking that this person must be somewhere in one of these neighborhoods. And then, in the midst of all this, comes the report that gunshots were heard, along with the tragic discovery of the cat’s body in the same area. It was obvious that someone had killed the cat. It occurred to me that, if someone had found the gun, they might first use it on an animal. I became convinced. I knew that I was right about this. I must confess, I was even a little excited about it.”
He chuckled when he said this, and hearing the sudden sound of his laughter, I could feel a tremor deep within my body. I became aware that I was smoking cigarettes at a feverish pace, and realized that I was gulping down all of my coffee. Yet I couldn’t help it. The man seemed to still be watching me, but since I wasn’t looking at him, I wasn’t really sure.