Reina had been pregnant.
This could not be a coincidence. In some strange way, this had to be related to the case.
After Koichiro’s stunning statement, I immediately checked with forensics. Forensics wouldn’t have missed a fetus if the corpse had one, so it should’ve been in the report. I contacted them again, but they said there hadn’t been one.
“She was definitely pregnant,” Koichiro said. “I went with her to the hospital.”
“She must’ve had it aborted after that,” Dr. Higano said. “Abortions leave hardly any scars. Forensics could’ve missed it with a quick first pass.”
Koichiro hung his head. “Is that what she did? Why would she have an abortion? I…thought you all already knew she was pregnant. But not even Ken knew.” Koichiro put his hands on his head. “Whose kid was she carrying?”
I looked over at “Otoha” thinking she might’ve known, but she shook her head.
“Unfortunately I didn’t know either,” she said.
But the woman was a liar. So I had no idea if she was lying or telling the truth. And I didn’t think we’d find anything out from her now.
If that was the case, no one here knew the answer to Koichiro’s question.
Or…
“I’ll answer that,” Dr. Higano said, straightening his jacket.
Koichiro opened his eyes wide. “How?…Come to think of it, you did already know that she was pregnant.”
Now it was my turn to be surprised. Dr. Higano raised one hand to apologize for keeping quiet about it.
I wondered when the two of them had talked—and then remembered that Dr Higano went to Koichiro’s hotel room to follow up on a few things he hadn’t asked at the interrogation. Maybe that’s when they’d discussed it.
“It was meee!” A voice issued from the tablet on the desk. “I looked into all of the medical clinics Reina visited recently.”
Onscreen, Noi-tan had a look of supreme self-satisfaction. Before anyone could say anything, Dr. Higano silently flipped the tablet over.
“Nooo, Doctorrrrrr! Why? Why?”
He turned off the tablet. The bear disappeared; she was a total mismatch for the serious situation.
“I don’t care how you figured it out right now!” Koichiro said. “If you know, tell me. Whose child was it?!”
“Whose child?” Dr. Higano smiled. “Is that really what you should be asking?”
Everyone, myself included, was wide-eyed, unsure of what he meant.
“I don’t think there’s any need to stand on ceremony. After all, I already know everything about Reina’s murder.”
“What do you mean by…everything?” Koichiro asked, his voice trembling.
“Everything,” Dr. Higano responded.
He took the cube puzzle on the desk into his hands.
“Now then,” he said and stared at the puzzle with an emotional intensity. He took it with both hands and twisted it with great force.
Snap.
The puzzle separated in the middle, as though it had been decapitated.
“We need to dissect this case,” Dr. Higano said, “and expose what lies within.”
He plucked off each cube from the puzzle and let them fall to the table. The overhead light made them flash like counterfeit jewels.
They were a sign for the hopeless conclusion he had come to.
We were all completely transfixed by Dr. Higano’s act of destruction. He’d drawn us all in, convinced that we’d missed something important in the case.
“Let’s look at everything in order,” he said. “First, why was her body in the park?”
I snapped from my daze and said, “Wasn’t it…because the killer was pretending to be Masquerade?”
Dr. Higano nodded. “When someone sees a body with its face cut off and a limb missing, the first person that comes to mind is Masquerade. It makes sense that the killer was trying to make it look like one of Masquerade’s crimes. However, it was a red herring—a misdirection. He made people think what he wanted, and concealed the most important details.”
Dr. Higano took the glass cubes in his hand.
“What he wanted to hide was the fact that he had to cut off Reina’s foot.”
I wrinkled my brow. Why the hell would he have had to cut off her foot?
“Yuri, imagine you were in Shota’s position. You receive a strange message from Reina, get to her place, and find a severed foot. What would you think?”
I closed my eyes and thought carefully. I imagined looking at the severed foot—it was impossible to have any good thoughts about that.
“Someone might’ve killed Reina…That’s what I would’ve thought.”
“Yes, that’s to be expected. There was a foot in her apartment, after all. However, the truth wasn’t so simple.” Dr. Higano continued theatrically. “When Shota found the foot, Reina hadn’t yet been killed. At that point, she was still alive.”
“Nope,” Yamaji contradicted him immediately. “Doc, that’s impossible. Forensics found that the foot matched the body in the park.”
“Yes, I know.”
Yamaji wrinkled his brow, and Dr. Higano continued.
“Do you remember the cause of death forensics discovered? The knife wounds to her heart were the cause of death, not the loss of her foot. We could tell from her vital reactions that the foot was removed while she was still alive. If you think about it, the most sensible order for the killer would be like this: First, incapacitate her at her apartment by stabbing her in the chest. Then, before she dies, cut off her foot and her face. That would have associated the killing with the way Masquerade takes home a body part after he kills.
“However, what the killer did was really the opposite of that.”
In other words, I thought to myself…
“Reina’s killer cut off her foot with a chainsaw and then, after allowing a substantial period of time to elapse, stabbed her in the chest and killed her.”
At his awful explanation, I had to press my hands against my temples. If it was true, her murder was unspeakably cruel. Even if she’d been given anesthesia, she would’ve spent an awful period of time without her foot.
“Why would he do something so horrible?” I asked.
“To obfuscate the time and place of the killing. Up to this point, we thought Reina returned home after the café and was killed during the period of time from between when Shota received a message from her and when Shota called the police. In other words, from 7:11 P.M. to 7:48 P.M. However, this was not the case.” Dr. Higano paused and then continued. “The killer abducted her on her way home from the café, tied her up with rope, gave her the anesthesia, and cut off her foot. Then he stopped the bleeding so she wouldn’t bleed out. Next he took her by car to somewhere isolated. He took her phone and at 7:11 P.M. made a call from another location via LINE. The reason she didn’t say anything over the phone is, obviously, because she wasn’t there.”