“Right,” Dr. Higano admitted, almost too readily. “That’s correct. Do you mind if I ask how you arrived at that conclusion?”
“Do you remember how you responded when I asked you, here in this room, whether you’d identified a suspect?”
Dr. Higano just smiled and didn’t respond.
“You said, ‘Yes, I’m going to pin it on her father.’”
Dr. Higano looked at me with curiosity in his blue eyes.
“I don’t know if you were serious or joking. But at any rate, when you said that, I started to rethink everything Koichiro had said and done.”
My mouth was getting parched. Now I could’ve used some coffee, but I’d left the coffee Erika had made for me in the waiting room.
“Before Koichiro confessed, he went into that rage against Ken. He thought Ken had been irresponsible as a fiancé. He yelled at both of them and asked which one had impregnated his daughter. That felt a little strange to me. If her pregnancy was his motive as he later confessed, then that incredibly real anger would all have had to be an act.”
Dr. Higano nodded, encouraging me to continue.
“And there was absolutely no need at all for him to lie like that. On the contrary, he was just tightening his own noose…So I started thinking about that contradiction, and here’s how I explained it.”
I readied myself to deliver.
“Koichiro didn’t actually know that Reina was carrying his child.”
Dr. Higano nodded deeply. “Yes, he first learned it was his child only as he heard my theory.”
I was relieved my hunch was correct.
“But I’m lost after that,” I admitted. “I don’t know how you figured out it was him and then cornered him. I have no idea why Koichiro accepted a false theory and then confessed to being the killer.”
What’s more, he even had the definitive piece of evidence—the BMW key. The circumstances seemed all just a little too convenient for the case Dr. Higano was making.
“Hmm.” Dr. Higano put a hand to his jaw in thought. “I see. To make this explanation simpler, let me ask you a question: Who do you think is the real killer?”
“Umm.” I thought hard. There were a few people I suspected. But the name that came to mind was a little off base.
“I think it’s Masquerade.”
I immediately regretted saying it.
And it should be obvious why. Since the crime, there had been absolutely no evidence suggesting Masquerade was the killer. Even I knew that my theory required some intense leaps in logic.
Nevertheless, even after all that had happened, I still couldn’t shake my initial impression of the criminal profile.
I knew Dr. Higano would probably sneer at me for continuing to insist that it was Masquerade so obsessively, without any factual basis.
“So I see,” he said, “you haven’t changed your stance at all.”
But when I dared to glance up, his face didn’t hold even a trace of disappointment.
Instead he looked at me intently, with great interest in his eyes.
Then his gaze moved to my right hand and lifted the edge of his mouth for the slightest instant.
“There was a trick to getting Koichiro to make that false confession.”
“A trick?” I asked.
“Yes. The trick was to indirectly communicate the identity and motive of the real killer to Koichiro. Once he knew that, he had no choice but to identify himself as the killer.”
I was stunned. I never would have guessed. “So if you know who the real killer is, his reasoning makes more sense?”
“I believe so.”
“Dr. Higano, please, tell me the truth!” I raised my voice.
In response, Dr. Higano drew his lips together and became silent. After a moment, he slowly stood from his Aeron chair and took something from his black shelves.
It was the remains of the glass cube puzzle he had destroyed.
“I’ve been involved in many different cases as a detective. And thanks to that experience, there’s a conclusion I’ve come to. It’s one that you’ve heard me say a number of times now.” Dr. Higano seemed to be enjoying the feeling of the broken cubes as he played with them in his hands. “The truth has very little value.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“The truth is sometimes cruel. When it’s cruel, it’s best to cover it up with white lies. It’s best to manufacture something beautiful. That’s what I believe.”
“I disagree,” I said, in clear opposition to him.
I respected Dr. Higano, but I just could not accept this.
But Dr. Higano didn’t budge. “Reina risked her life in pursuit of the truth,” he said. “Do you still feel that way even after all her great work came to nothing?”
“What?”
He lowered his eyes to the glass blocks.
“Once you destroy the fiction, it’s like this broken puzzle. You can never put it back together again. It’s all for nothing. It’s just a shell without a fragment of beauty. Yet you still want to expose the truth? Are you really prepared for that?”
I opened my eyes wide.
Because Dr. Higano wouldn’t have made up a killer without any reason. He must’ve had a reason why he thought he had to. And that reason was something important enough to choose to falsely charge Koichiro.
Once I heard the truth, I could never go back. Once I knew the real killer, I wouldn’t be able to feign ignorance. This was my only chance to retreat.
“Tell me,” I said, without any hesitation.
Dr. Higano closed his eyes and nodded deeply.
Then he opened them and told the truth:
✦ ✦ ✦
“The real killer is Reina Myoko herself. Her death was a suicide.”