Yamaji scratched at his hair. “We had considered that the call might’ve been a setup,” he said. “The estimated time of death calculated from the state of rigor mortis was between 6:00 P.M. and midnight because her leg had been soaking in the water. But there’s no way the foot was cut off at a different time from when she was stabbed in the chest.”
“Yes, the killer knew exactly what we’d think,” Dr. Higano said. “He made sure to have a solid alibi for 7:00 P.M., then waited for the right time, went back to the car where Reina was still alive, and stabbed her in the chest, either in the car or somewhere nearby, I’m not sure. He cut off her face to make us think it was Masquerade or someone trying to copy Masquerade. Then it would make sense that he cut off her foot.
“If we were able to determine an accurate time of death, his alibi would be meaningless, so the body couldn’t be discovered right away. That’s why it’s not unusual that the body didn’t turn up for a while. Otherwise he would’ve gone to all that trouble to create an alibi and never even be able to use it. So he decided to abandon the body on the tetrapods in the park and put her leg in the water. That way the disintegration would help him disguise the time of death and at the same time control when the body would be discovered. He knew it was unlikely the body would be discovered shrouded in darkness and that there was a good chance it would be discovered at a certain point in the morning.”
I screwed up my face. “Discovered at a certain point?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
The body was by no means in an obvious location, so it would’ve been tough for the killer to predict when exactly it would be found. The first person to see it had been an old man out walking in the morning. It had been a total coincidence.
“A designated kindergartener school path went through that area, didn’t it?” Dr. Higano said.
“What?!”
I realized he was right. As long as little kids walked through the area in the morning, the chances of the body being discovered would’ve been high.
Did that mean the killer had planned for kindergarten-aged children to come across a grotesquely mutilated corpse with its face cut off?
“He’s not human,” I said.
Yamaji made it clear he was disgusted. “He was trying to make kids discover the body. He cut off the victim’s foot so he’d have an alibi, then cut off her face and got rid of it. This is some twisted shit.”
Dr. Higano made no sign of agreement or disagreement. He continued, “The killer made the call from Reina’s phone so we’d mistakenly think he had killed her in the brief 37 minutes between 7:11 and 7:38. All three of the men we questioned, Shota included, had alibis for that period. However, if we assume he cut off the foot in the three-hour period after she left the café at 4:00 P.M., and also that she was killed before midnight based on the coroner’s estimated time of death, then conveniently for us, one person no longer has an alibi.”
I remembered that Dr. Higano had asked each man about their alibis from 8:00 P.M. onward at the beginning of the interrogations.
I rushed to open the records on the desk. Just as Dr. Higano said, only one of the three men no longer had an alibi.
“It can’t be!”
But—he was her—
I looked at the killer.
If it was him, why had he been acting the way he had until now?
I was overcome with shock. Dr. Higano ignored me. He matter-of-factly named him: “Koichiro, it was you.”
At this, Koichiro didn’t panic. He stood stock still, the blood draining from his face. He looked like he was still catching up to what was going on. I couldn’t get any read on what he was thinking.
Ken spoke up in place of the dazed Koichiro. “Just because he doesn’t have an alibi doesn’t instantly make him the killer, right? It just means that of the three people you questioned, one of them doesn’t have an alibi. Maybe the killer is someone who isn’t here right now. This woman here doesn’t have an alibi, does she?” He looked over at “Otoha.” She responded to his charge with a graceful smile.
“What motive would Koichiro even have to kill Reina in the first place?” Ken continued. “She was trying to avenge him. Even if their parent-child relationship wasn’t good, he’d never do something like that. After all, no matter what, it’s only natural to think he really loved her.”
“Your questions make sense,” Dr. Higano said. “I don’t know what his motive was yet.” He began to pick up the pieces of the puzzle he had disassembled. “However, if we arbitrarily assume that Koichiro was the killer, I can then theorize what his motive would have been.”
He looked at Koichiro through one of the glass cubes.
“And this theory will demonstrate my true value as a detective.”
Koichiro was still wide-eyed. He hung his head and looked away. I couldn’t tell if he was silent from shock at being accused, or because, given the circumstances, he had nothing to say.
Dr. Higano looked away from the glass cube and turned toward the woman.
“Otoha—I don’t know if that’s your real name, but I hope you don’t mind me calling you that for convenience’s sake—when we questioned you, you attempted to make us think the killer was someone from an imaginary syndicate, did you not?”
The woman shook her head with a smile. “You can think what you like. As far as I’m concerned, I gave no such suggestion.”
“Yes, but right now we are running with the assumption that Koichiro is the culprit. So please allow us to continue under the assumption that someone from the syndicate wasn’t the killer.”
There was nothing she could say to that. The woman let out a small sigh and went silent.
“If Koichiro was the killer, then Otoha covered his tracks with this story about the syndicate and protected him. Why would she do that? The rational response would be that she, too, was helping Reina take her revenge.”
“Even if I told you you’re wrong,” the woman said, “you’re still going to keep going, aren’t you.”
“Yes. Now then, let’s assume that everything Otoha said when we questioned her was convenient for Koichiro…Yuri.”
“Y-Yes.” I straightened my spine.