“Then we found Shota dead in the bathroom,” Yamaji reported.
He stood with a hand on his forehead, frowning in front of Shota’s corpse in one of the men’s toilet stalls.
He’d died sitting on the toilet. His eyes were rolled back, and postmortem bruising was starting to appear on his neck. His slick-backed haircut was disheveled, like he’d pulled at it in pain, and the empty energy drink can had fallen from his outstretched hand. The almond aroma characteristic of cyanide wafted through the bathroom.
As one might imagine, it’s not easy to see the dead body of a person who’d been alive just moments ago. I hadn’t been involved in his death, but I was struck by a strange sense of guilt. It was all I could do to fight that feeling off. So I decided to leave the body to the forensics team; I didn’t have the strength to look closely at the corpse myself.
The men’s bathroom was shrill with the shutters of flashing cameras, but even after I stepped out, a brutal air seemed to fill the police station. A dead body inside a station was unheard of. It raised the specter of management, and someone would have to answer for it.
Yamaji was first on that list. He leaned against the wall in the hallway with a lollipop in his mouth.
“It was suicide,” he said. “Had to be. That drink had cyanide in it. Shota left the interrogation room, took one sip of that drink he’d had on his chair, and ran into the bathroom where he must’ve finished the rest of the poison off. Marks show he pressed his mouth into his arm, apparently to choke off any screaming.”
Dr. Higano was sitting in a chair nearby. He tilted his head. “He ran into the bathroom after just a sip?”
“Yeah. I thought he was acting a little strange and secretly followed him up to the stall. So there’s no way anyone else could’ve been involved.”
“Why didn’t he just wait and drink it all in the stall?” Dr. Higano said. “What did Shota look like when he took the sip of the drink?”
“He coughed and turned pale. And he was mumbling something. ‘Oh, so that’s what,’ or something, I think.”
“That sounds like he didn’t know the drink was poisoned.”
“Even if that’s true, doesn’t change the fact that he killed himself. He chugged the whole thing even after he realized it was poison.”
“Yes, that is the case.”
“Dammit, he died right in front of me,” Yamaji said. “It’s a fucking disgrace! I’m never getting promoted now.”
He gnawed on his lollipop. His frustration likely was a product of his sense of justice and the fact that he hadn’t prevented the suicide, rather than any real concern over his position. That’s the kind of person Yamaji was.
I was suddenly overcome with exhaustion and plopped down onto the ground. My thoughts were hazy, but I managed to ask, “So…What was his motive for killing himself?”
“He was scared of the syndicate,” Yamaji said. “They brutally murdered his girlfriend. Maybe he thought it’d be better to go out less painfully? That’s probably also the reason he confessed everything—he was getting ready to die.”
“Hmph.” Dr. Higano grunted and put a hand to his mouth. He was clearly unconvinced.
“He said, ‘The syndicate is still after us,’” Dr. Higano repeated Shota’s words, and then looked at Yamaji and me. “Us. Who was he talking about? I thought it was just Shota and Reina, the two of them taking revenge.”
“Maybe…he just misspoke?” Yamaji guessed.
“Could be. But what if he didn’t? It would suggest that Reina is still alive.“
He had to be joking.
But the look on Dr. Higano’s face was not one that had just rattled off a silly joke.
Yamaji wasn’t looking at Dr. Higano so he didn’t notice the face he was making and just itched at his head.
“But the syndicate they formed,” Yamaji said and laughed. “Ha! This shit is too heavy for a couple of cops to go after. Someone like me gets too deep, they get wiped out. But we also can’t back down from something this awful.”
Yamaji might’ve been a little rash with how he worded things, but his resolve was genuine. Indeed, there was a fire burning in his glare, as though he was squaring off against a massive opponent.
To be honest, when Yamaji said badass stuff like that, it was more difficult for me to treat him like the dope he was…which was confusing.
I threw some cold water on him. “Uh, Yamaji, sorry to rain on your Parade of Justice, but this syndicate might not have anything to do with this murder.”
“Huh?”
“That was Dr. Higano’s conclusion. We just finished taking the account of Otoha Tamachi, or rather the woman calling herself Otoha. That’s how he concluded Shota isn’t connected to this case.”
“That true, Doc?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Dr. Higano said.
But the doctor’s theories were always rock solid.
He continued. “But we were just taking Shota’s word that this syndicate was trying to wipe out all traces of this secret club. We don’t have proof that it actually existed.”
Yamaji grimaced and sucked on his lollipop. “You think Shota intentionally lied and then died? Didn’t seem that way to me…”
“Based on what I could see on the tape, the chances that he was lying are pretty low. He was really convinced the syndicate existed and was responsible for this crime.”
“Duh, that’s exactly why they used him.” A now-familiar, modulated voice echoed from Dr. Higano’s tablet. On the tablet was none other than the gross green bear, Noi-tan; I’d never get used to seeing her.
Yamaji didn’t seem fazed, so he must’ve already been familiar with Noi-tan. Well, he had known Dr. Higano a lot longer than I had.
“They could stall the investigation by making it seem like the crime was committed by this mysterious syndicate,” she said. “Even if you did investigate the secret club, there are so many bigwigs involved, you’d be tiptoe-ing on your tiptoes! It’d take so much damn time you’d be pulling your hair out. They put you in this situation by forcing Shota to confess and then having him kill himself! There’s no way I’m wrong—I’m a freaking genius!”
I hated to belabor the point, but how much information were the police leaking to Dr. Higano, for one, but also this shady green bear?
I could easily get sucked into that thought as into quicksand, so I put it out of my mind for now.
Noi-tan did have a point. And I knew that there was at least one woman who wanted us to think Shota was involved.
Yes—the woman calling herself Otoha Tamachi.
“Ah, Yuri, here you are.” Kondo from the 1st Investigative Unit called over to me in a loud voice. There were creases starting to appear in his usually refreshed-looking face; he looked exhausted from working so late.
“Kondo, what’s up?”
“Remember how you asked me to look into some of Reina’s friends from school? I heard from Yamaji and did a quick check…”
“Yeah, and there wasn’t anything all that useful on the database?”
“No, I actually found something pretty serious.” Kondo, perplexed, ran a hand through his short hair. “All five of the people you asked about had missing persons reports filed for them at the same time five years ago.”
My eyes opened wide. “Otoha, too?”
“Yes. Otoha Tamachi, Miyuki Yata, Sena Hagawa, Asami Ino, and Ryoko Omura.”
All of Reina’s Bumblebee girl gang were missing.
What does that mean? I thought. And who the hell is this woman we have claiming to be Otoha?
I felt heat creeping up my neck. All of the Bumblebees were missing. Of course something ridiculous like this would happen.
Earlier, Dr. Higano had theorized: “The Bumblebees are deeply involved with this murder.”
Shota Akiyama had just died.
And we had no idea where the Bumblebees were.
“You look stumped, Yuri.” Dr. Higano stood and patted me on the shoulder. “For the time being, let’s take care of the new questions that’ve arisen from Shota’s account. I’m sure there were things that felt a little too convenient when you were listening to his story.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Hmm…”
There were definitely some things I wasn’t sure about, but was I on the right track?
Nervously, I ventured my opinion. “It’s a little too pat that Heiji Nakahigashi, Reina’s supposed target for revenge, was her fiancé’s father, right?”
“Exactly,” he said.
I sighed in relief. I hadn’t disappointed Dr. Higano.
“Ken Nakahigashi,” the doctor continued thoughtfully. “I think we have to consider the fact that he’s involved in Reina’s scheme.”
4 This (in the Japanese, “Jooh Paper Corporation”) is a pun on the existing Daioh Paper Corporation.