“And my feet?”
“Aren’t tied.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no need. Most people won’t be able to move around at all if they can’t see anything or use their hands. Tying your legs would be a bother to the kidnappers. Because they’d have to undo it and retie it every time you have to go to the bathroom.”
Juri nodded. “Got it.”
“When you tried to move, you heard a woman’s voice—that’s how you’ll respond. The woman said, ‘Don’t get up from the bed. If you’re obedient, we won’t do anything to you.’”
“She’s cool.”
“That’s right, she’s a cool woman. When you think of a cool woman, whom do you visualize?”
Juri tilted her head a bit. “Makiko Esumi,” she said. A little different from mine, but that was all right.
“Well, let’s go with that. The police will ask you: Were there any special characteristics to her voice? How old do you think she is? Did she have an accent? At that time, you think of Makiko Esumi. You answer the police’s questions like it was her voice you heard.”
“What do I do if they ask if it’s a voice I’ve heard before? Could I answer it’s Makiko Esumi’s voice?” Juri smiled impishly.
“Be my guest. The police would never knock on Esumi’s door even if you did. Well, they can go bother her if they want.”
“So the cool woman’s task is to watch me.”
“She’s your jailer and caterer. Even though you didn’t have an appetite, that woman had you eat, and you couldn’t resist. You were eating with a blindfold on, so nothing really hot. Nothing that would be hard to eat. It was probably sandwiches. We’ll say she untied your hands at least then. However, at those times, she tied up your legs instead. Yeah, let’s go with that.”
“When I eat, my hands are free, my legs are tied together…” It seemed Juri was picturing it in her head.
“Makiko Esumi had one more task. She was your conversation partner. We’ll say she chose topics unrelated to the case and chatted with you. About actors, fashion, sports, that kind of thing.”
“Boyfriends?”
“That’s—” I shook my head. “We’ll say she became less talkative whenever that topic came up. The woman wasn’t acting alone, so the police will probably think that the principal offender was her boyfriend or husband. In which case, they’ll want to know anything she said regarding love. That would be a hassle. A massive creative burden on you.”
“I see.” Juri seemed to be onboard. “Can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“When I went to the bathroom, did I have my blindfold on? How would I go about it when I couldn’t see anything? Would Makiko Esumi have assisted me? I kind of don’t like that.”
I nodded with a strained smile. She had a point. It was a part we at least needed to pin something down for. “How about this? Whenever you said you wanted to go to the bathroom, the woman would take your hand and lead you to it. Your blindfold came off only after you got into the bathroom.”
“So then the two of us would go in together?”
“It felt cramped, but what can I say? The kidnappers didn’t want to give you any extra information. Once your blindfold was off, the woman would leave. After that, you had a little leisure time for yourself. You could pee, or whatever, to your heart’s content.”
“What a way to put it. You old perv.”
“Naturally, you observe the bathroom interior. It was like this. The walls were concrete. There was just a small ventilation fan and no windows. The light was an incandescent lamp. They had amassed a reserve of toilet paper and even sanitary napkins. The toilet was Western style. It also came with a spray feature.”
Juri clasped her hands as though in relief. It was probably hard for her to imagine taking care of her business without the spray feature. There would be more and more people like her with every passing year.
“The door was wooden. Originally it was made so that it locked from the inside. You know, the kind with a lateral bolt. However, the mechanism was taken out to keep you from holing up in there.”
“I wonder if I can remember all that.” Juri knit her brows, made fists with both hands, and held her head in between them. “I need a cheat sheet.”
“The police will ask whether you heard anything when you were in the bathroom or when you were going to and from it.”
“I can’t go wrong with saying I heard nothing, right?”
I shook my head. “Once you’re blindfolded, your hearing becomes fairly acute. If you tell them you heard nothing at all, they might get suspicious. It’s better if you heard something.”
Juri snapped her fingers. “Ships.”
“Not bad.” I nodded. This girl really was sharp.
“When we made the first call,” Juri said, “we went to Yokosuka and had them hear the whistling. It was so they’d think the hideout was near a harbor, right? Then now too, wouldn’t it be good to have the same thing?”
“You’re right. But if you say you always heard it, that would be unnatural. The criminals would definitely have been wary of that. You heard it once or twice, but it sounded distant. That’s what you should tell them.”
“Got it. Will that do on the sound front?”
“Just ship whistles and nothing else would be weird. The sound of cars passing by, let’s add that too. Because places where you can’t hear that are rare.”
“Ships and cars.” Juri had on her game face.
“All right, the cool woman isn’t the only person you met. We need at least one more person to come on stage. That’ll be the man.”
“I know. The principal perpetrator who took the ransom.”
“Principal perpetrator? That’s quite a tongue twister. But he’s exactly that. You’ve been forced to work with that perpetrator at least three times. Once was the time you initially called. The police will probably ask you to talk about that in detail.”
“This has become really tiring.” Juri made a dejected face and scratched her head.
“Those guys are desperate. The ransom money was just whisked away, okay? Forgive them for interrogating you.”
“Sure. So, how should I explain it?”
“You say that you were told to call home. At that time, you heard the voice of the lead perp. Like with the cool woman, the police will probably ask what kind of voice he had.”
“Who should I make it this time? How about Masaharu Fukuyama?” Her eyes lit up. She must have been a fan.
“In my mind he’s in his forties, though. Is there a person you can think of?”
Juri moved her pupils around before slapping her knee. “I think the homeroom teacher I had my senior year in high school was around that age. He doesn’t have to be famous, right?”
“Works for me. Well, that covers the first call. The next part is a little difficult. It’s the Hakozaki conversation. That time, there’s no way you didn’t leave the hideout, so the police will probably be persistent.”
“I guess ‘I don’t know anything’ wouldn’t pass muster?”
“But you still had your blindfold on. Additionally, they put headphones on you. Loud music was playing from them. It was obviously an arrangement on the criminals’ part to keep you from hearing extra sounds. They had you get in the car like that and took you somewhere. You don’t need to know too much about the place. You couldn’t see or hear, so who’s to blame you? There, they finally took off your headphones, but the blindfold stayed on. Eventually, the man gave you detailed instructions. Like I did then. You did what the man told you and talked to Katsutoshi Katsuragi on a cellphone.”
“That time, you wrote what I was supposed to say on a note, though. If I were blindfolded, that wouldn’t work.”