“Wait. It doesn’t take you ten to twenty minutes just to put on your shoes, does it? Supposing what you’re saying is true, even if Aoii did strangle Emoto, she wouldn’t die that fast. People can live for up to ten minutes without breathing.”
“Zerozaki, could it be that you’re misunderstanding the situation because you’re a serial killer who specializes in knives? Strangulation victims don’t all necessarily die from suffocation. They can also die from lack of blood flow to the brain. You just have to pull upward, like this. If you manage to cut off the carotid artery, it takes less than a minute. If you’re good, it only takes a couple dozen seconds.”
“Really?”
“Really. So after that, Mikoko opened the door, looking completely innocent, and came out to the entranceway. At that point, she was blocking my view, so I couldn’t see into the room. Then we left Tomoe’s apartment together and exited the building.”
“Yeah, that all adds up, but…” Zerozaki still seemed dissatisfied. “That’s all assuming you hadn’t gotten the phone call. But Emoto did call you. So she was still alive even after you left the building. Don’t tell me she came back to life for an instant.”
“You keep coming up with nonsensical hypotheses. Of course that’s not it. Tomoe died instantly, so it’s simple. Awfully simple. If you just think about it, you’ll figure it out. The call was for me, but it wasn’t on my phone, okay?”
“Right… It was Aoii’s, wasn’t it? But wasn’t that because she didn’t know your number?”
“Let’s go back to the basics for a second here. What is the advantage of a cell phone to begin with? It’s that it lets you make a call from anywhere. That call didn’t necessarily come from Tomoe’s apartment. And on top of that, phones don’t let you see the caller’s face.”
“You’re saying Aoii had an accomplice? And the accomplice used Emoto’s phone to pose as her?”
“Uh-uh, there was no accomplice. I’m pretty sure this was a spontaneous crime to begin with. The murder weapon seems to indicate that as well.”
“You mean a thin strip of cloth?”
“Yeah. Most likely, it was the ribbon from the present Akiharu gave to Tomoe. A ribbon is fairly well cut out for strangling someone. It’s flexible and fits to your skin. It works even better than rope. But anyway, considering the murder weapon was just something that happened to be there, not something that had been prepared, it’s hard to think it was premeditated.”
“Then who made that phone call?”
“Mikoko didn’t need an accomplice. She placed the call herself,” I said. “She just had to have Tomoe’s phone in her pocket and to speed-dial her own phone from it. Of course there’d be no one on the other end, but Mikoko pretended it was a call from Tomoe. And then she passed the phone to me.”
“But when you were on the line, didn’t you speak with somebody? Wasn’t she trying to tell you something she had forgotten?”
“Yeah, but that was Mikoko. At that time, I was walking a step ahead of her. Same deal as what happened at the apartment. I didn’t realize that Mikoko was right behind me whispering into Tomoe’s phone. By the time I turned back around, she had already slipped it back into her pocket.”
The way Tomoe was murdered.
The way an alibi was created.
Without question, both methods were extremely risky. If I had just turned my head around on a whim, the whole jig would’ve been up. But if you thought about it, the odds of that happening were fairly long. The risk was big, but the chance of success was extremely high. If you weighed things in terms of value, it was certainly a risk worth taking.
“Anyway, that gave her an alibi. Then the next day, she went to Tomoe’s place, returned the phone, and called the police. They say you should suspect the person who discovers the body, but she had an alibi, and she must have hidden the murder weapon in her own apartment or something before going back to Tomoe’s.”
Of course, Mikoko was the only one who knew all of the minute details, so you’d have to pay her a visit to get the full story, which sure wasn’t happening. But that was the gist of it. I might not have had every single fact right, but it seemed close enough to the truth to be called a solution.
Mikoko probably wrote that “x over y” formula when she “discovered” the body. The previous night, she had neither the time nor the notion to do such a thing.
“Well, that definitely makes Aoii sound like the killer. But it’s still just a possibility─I mean, you don’t have any proof, do you?”
“Well, no. You’re right.” I wasn’t loath to draw that line. “Strictly speaking, there’s no proof. Sure, it could’ve been some burglar.”
“Don’t you have, uh, any sort of pride?”
“At any rate, that explains Tomoe’s case. Got any other questions?”
“Argh,” Zerozaki groaned with a frustrated expression, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words. “Nah, forget it,” he cried uncle. “Okay, on to Aoii’s own case. How was it a suicide? Even the police think it’s a homicide, don’t they?”
“Well, there are various reasons, but her motive for killing herself should be obvious. After she murdered Tomoe, her conscience got the best of her.”
“Murderers have a conscience?”
“Not everyone’s like you,” I chided, facetiously. “That’s what was written in her suicide note, anyway.”
“Ah. I guess if it was in her suicide note, that pretty much settles it… At least it proves that Aoii chose to die. I sure don’t understand it, though. Suicide, huh? I guess there are all sorts of killers in this world. But if she was going to do that, she shouldn’t have killed in the first place… Hey, hold on a sec.”
“Huh? What?”
“What do you mean, suicide note?”
“It’s an essay of sorts you write before committing suicide to leave the world with your thinking. Not to be confused with the will and testament.”
“Thanks, Detective Columbo.” Mouthing those words, Zerozaki simultaneously kicked me in the hand. Naturally, this was excruciatingly painful since all of my fingers were broken.
“What’re you doing? What if my bones don’t set properly?”
“Play soccer. So what’s up with this suicide note? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Yeah. You see, before that… Well, think about it. Didn’t it seem strange to begin with?”
“Didn’t what seem strange?”
“What do you think?” It was the very thing Sasaki had pointed out. “Look at me, Zerozaki.” Me, a loser of a human being who broke long ago. A failure of a human who didn’t have a single intact nerve left. Who desired death more than anything else. “Do you really think I’d get so sick just from seeing the strangled corpse of somebody I knew?”
“Ah. So you mean, you felt so sick because it wasn’t a homicide, but a suicide?”
“Nope. A corpse is a corpse for me, whether it’s a suicide or homicide.”
“… …”
“When I arrived at Mikoko’s place, I buzzed her intercom. There was no reply. Realizing, based on assorted experiences, that it was probably a bad sign, I hurried into her room. And what did I see? The dead body of Mikoko, who had strangled herself, lying on the bed.”