“I agree.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Did he, now?
✦ ✦ ✦
“So, L, back to what I was saying earlier, if he’s taken such extreme precautions, then I doubt I’m going to be able to find anything new here. It’s a faint hope at best. Someone like this isn’t going to make a mistake.”
✦ ✦ ✦
A mistake.
✦ ✦ ✦
Like the one she’d made last month.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Normally this kind of investigation starts by finding the criminal’s mistake, and then filling in the puzzle from there, but in this case, I doubt we’ll find anything like that.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“No, I don’t think we will,” L said. “But what if it isn’t a mistake?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Not a mistake?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yes. Something he deliberately left behind. And if the police detectives simply failed to notice it…
✦ ✦ ✦
then we might have a chance.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Deliberately leaving clues? Did that ever happen? Not in the normal run of things, no—why would anyone leave something behind hat could be used against them? Or wait. Now that he mentioned it, they already knew two examples of exactly that behavior. One was the Wara Ningyo nailed to the walls, and the other was the thumb turn locks, creating a locked room. These were not mistakes, but had clearly been left behind by the killer. Especially the latter. Exactly the thing that Misora had been most interested in—locked rooms were almost always created when the killer was trying to make it look like a suicide. But the first victim was strangled from behind, the second was beaten to death with a weapon that was not found at the scene, and the third victim was stabbed with, again, a weapon not left at the scene… none of which could ever be mistaken for a suicide. Which meant there was nothing to be gained from creating a locked room. It was not a mistake, but it was unnatural.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Wara Ningyo were the same.
✦ ✦ ✦
She had no idea what they meant.
✦ ✦ ✦
Since Wara Ningyo were used for curses in Japan, there were people wildly theorizing that the killer was Japanese, or someone with a deep-seated grudge against the Japanese, but especially since these Wara Ningyo were a particularly cheap variety that could be easily purchased in any toy shop (for about three dollars) no one theory had gained prominence.
✦ ✦ ✦
Misora shut the door behind her, and since the thumb turn lock was at waist height, she absently turned it and locked herself in.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then she checked each location where the dolls had been nailed to the walls.
✦ ✦ ✦
There had been four of them.
✦ ✦ ✦
One on each of the four walls of the square room. Obviously, they had been taken away by the police as critical evidence, and were no longer here. It was easy enough to tell where they had been, since there were holes in the walls. Misora took six pictures out of her bag. One of each of the four dolls. One showed the victim, Believe Bridesmaid, lying on his back on the bed, It clearly showed the rope marks around his neck.
✦ ✦ ✦
And then the last picture.
✦ ✦ ✦
This was not from the scene, but a close up of Believe Bridesmaid’s bare chest, taken during the autopsy. There were a number of major cuts on it, which appeared to have been carved into his flesh with a knife. They were not that deep, but ran in all directions. According to the report, they had been made after the victim’s death.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Generally speaking, when the killer engages in this sort of meaningless destruction of the corpse, they have a deep-seated grudge against their victim....for a freelance writer who would take any job, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had quite a few enemies. He did a lot of gossip columns...”
✦ ✦ ✦
“But Naomi Misora, that does not explain the connection to the second and third murders. Both of those bodies were also damaged in ways that had no direct connection to the cause of death—in fact, the damage seems to have escalated with each murder.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“It’s possible Bridesmaid was the only one he had a grudge against, and the other two murders were designed to disguise that. Or maybe it wasn’t Bridesmaid, but one of the other two.. .or two out of the three, and the third was camouflage. The destruction night be getting worse because it’s part of the disguise, or...”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You believe the killer is only pretending to kill indiscriminately?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“No. This is just one pattern worth considering. This idea wouldn’t explain the Wara Ningyo. I mean, maybe he deliberately left them there to prove that all three were killed by the same man—and the locked doors might be for the same reason.”
✦ ✦ ✦
In which case moving from Hollywood to downtown to the west side of town could be seen as an effort to confuse the investigation. The more people the case connected to, the more chaotic the investigation would become.., and the selection of a young girl as the second victim may have been done deliberately to make him look like a psycho.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Pretending to be abnormal... well, just the idea of doing that is abnormal enough,” L said. Misora was surprised to hear him express such a human sentiment. The emotion she felt was very similar to being impressed, and she quickly put the conversation back on topic —to cover her reaction, if not to hide it.
✦ ✦ ✦
“So, L, I feel ridiculous trying to figure out a connection between the victims. I think the police are doing a fine job with that, and... Frankly, checking out everyone who knew each of them seems more useful. I mean, the third victim, Backyard Bottomslash... she must have been involved in all kinds of business dealings at the bank.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“But Naomi Misora,” L interrupted. “This is no time for idle musings. I believe there will be a fourth murder in the near future.”
✦ ✦ ✦
He’d said something similar the day before. That there would be more victims. But based on what?
✦ ✦ ✦
With the killer still at large, it was an obvious possibility, but it seemed just as likely the murders would end at three. It all depended on the killer’s whim—as an investigator, she found it hard to place the odds higher than fifty-fifty.
✦ ✦ ✦
“The number of Wara Ningyo,” L said. “Four where you are, three downtown with the second victim, and two at the third scene, in West L.A—one less doll at each scene.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yeah. So?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“The number of dolls can still decrease by one.”
✦ ✦ ✦
She should have guessed. In fact, it made little sense to count backward from four to two and then stop.
✦ ✦ ✦
Even if Misora’s theory was right, and he was killing indiscriminately to camouflage his real victim, then the more victims the more effective this plan would be. Of course, each new murder was an added risk, but the return probably justified it. Frankly, there was no way of telling if this killer even considered murders a risk—there were certainly some killers who considered the murders themselves return enough. And it was abnormal to pretend to be abnormal...
✦ ✦ ✦
“So, L... you think there will be as many as two additional murders?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“More than a ninety percent chance,” he said. “I’d say a hundred, but there is a small possibility that something will happen on the killer’s side, preventing him from continuing. So maybe ninety-two percent. But Misora, if something does happen, it will not be two more—only one. There’s only a thirty percent chance of a fifth murder.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Thirty percent?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Quite a drop.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Why? There are two more Wara Ningyo... and if he’s using the dolls to represent his victims...”
✦ ✦ ✦
“But in that case, he won’t be able to leave a Wara Ningyo at the fifth crime scene. He will go from two dolls to one when he kills the fourth victim. That doll will make it obvious that these are the work of the stifle killer, but...”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Oh! I see,” Misora said, wincing at her own stupidity. Obviously whatever the killer’s motive, leaving a Wara Ningyo at the scene was part of his rules. He would hardly kill a fifth victim when the number of dolls had reached zero.
✦ ✦ ✦
“There is a thirty percent chance the killer won’t think things through that far, but that’s extremely doubtful. After all, he did wipe the light bulb sockets...”
✦ ✦ ✦
“So there will only be four victims total. The next one is the list.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“No. The third was the last,” L said firmly. Despite being a synthetic voice. “There will not be another.
✦ ✦ ✦
Not with me involved.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Confidence?
✦ ✦ ✦
Or hubris?
✦ ✦ ✦
Neither one was something Misora had laid claim to for a while now. The last few weeks in particular.
✦ ✦ ✦
What had confidence been like?
✦ ✦ ✦
What had pride been like?
✦ ✦ ✦
Misora no longer knew
✦ ✦ ✦
“But I need your assistance, Naomi Misora. I expect great things from your investigations.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Do you?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yes. Please keep your heart frozen while you work. In my experience, what a case like this needs most is a mind that will not be moved by anything. Behave as if you are playing chess on the ice.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“…”
✦ ✦ ✦
Wasn’t that called curling?
✦ ✦ ✦
“L, you do know that I’m on a leave of absence?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yes. That’s why I asked you for help. With this case, I need a skilled individual who can work on their own.”