Miika used her imagination to grapple with the concept. “So it’s like the brain is stored in formaldehyde all on its own?”
“That’s a good way of putting it,” replied Okuma, impressed. “But in this case, it’s an alien’s brain.”
“All right, sir. I do understand that you perform your job. So if you’ve got anything to say regarding this crime, now’s the time to come forward. You can insist on your innocence, if you desire. I don’t wish to be involved in this incident, either.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Okuma chewed on his nails some more. “Hmm. Could you tell me more about the crime scene? Bring me reference materials on it. If the chemistry team is in charge of the investigation, you should have access to that.”
“Why should I?”
“You said you didn’t want to do this, right? We’ll solve it faster if I can see the materials.”
“Why would I aid a potential murderer?”
“Who cares? It’s not going to hurt anything. C’mon, show a little trust in me.”
“Why should I trust you?” Miika questioned, glaring. “Did you really not kill the instructor?”
“Of course I didn’t. You think I’d do something so awful?”
“I do not know your character well enough to judge. I know you’re in the intelligence division, you gamble in violation of company rules, and you smoke a pack a day. That’s it,” Miika stated. Being able to tell how much a person smoked by their smell was one of her less pleasant abilities. She only mentioned it as a warning that he should cut back, but she didn’t know if he was the kind of man who was perceptive enough to take the hint.
“Uh-huh. So you know nothing about me,” Okuma decided, apparently satisfied. “Okay. Let’s extrapolate from there. If you were walking down the street and saw an unfamiliar man smoking a cigarette, would you think, ‘That man would probably commit murder’?”
“No.”
“Then you should believe in my innocence.”
“Your logic is awful.”
“Why don’t you understand?” Okuma asked, exasperated.
Miika was feeling frustrated, too; she just didn’t let it show.
“All right, fine. I’ll tell you what I know,” Okuma said, rocking backward and forward on the dirty tatami mats. “First of all, the conduct division definitely wants to handle this internally, if possible. In other words, they don’t want the populace to know there’s been a murder within the company. They can’t hide that there was a death, I assume, so they’d like to have it reported in the news as accidental. But they have to find the killer first.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they’re saddling you with the investigation. If it was a normal incident, they could easily go outside to solve it.”
“To a civilian source, you mean.”
“Plus, we’ve got a victim whose face was carved off—a very brutal way to kill. There are a few reasons someone might choose such a cruel and disfiguring method.”
“Political reasons. The possibility that this was a terrorist incident.”
“That’s one of them. There are plenty of anti-JR sentiments on the island. But that’s unlikely in this case. A terrorist would choose a more public place to strike than at a company dorm late at night. And there’s been no statement trumpeting their involvement.”
“Perhaps it was a sadistic murder. Someone who derived pleasure from cutting off the face of another,” Miika suggested.
Okuma didn’t reply right away. “I…didn’t think of that. Perhaps. And then, although orthodox, you have the possibility of a personal grudge. Someone who’d suffered under that man to the point that it pushed them to murder him in the most gruesome method conceivable. If that’s the case, then we’re in trouble. There are so many potential subjects, we’ll never narrow them down.”
“The instructor was a very strict and tough man, but I don’t know if he would inspire that kind of hatred.”
“Huh?” Okuma gaped, staring at Miika with incredulity. It seemed he was mocking her. “Listen, that guy was a real asshole, just a major piece of shit. Everyone learned that quick during training.”
“Is that right?”
“He was in personnel, you see. The guy would abuse his privileges like crazy.”
“Aren’t you in that cell right now because you were abusing your privileges?”
“Yeah, but I earned this. Don’t lump me in with someone who actually made others’ lives hell,” Okuma argued proudly. “Anyway, part of the issue is that the personnel division exists at all. Why do we need an entire group just for managing people? If some are talented and others are useless, that should be up to those who actually work with them to decide. It makes no sense that an independent department just decides these things from on high. Being in that position of judgment rots a person from the inside out. You turn out like him.”
Momentum built up as Okuma spoke so that the last few sentences tumbled out in a rush. Miika vaguely recalled how the whiteboard in the smoking room had things like Okuma +13 and Sakuma −11 written on it.
“What happened with him?”
“I don’t want to go into detail. He crossed the line between public and private. All you need to see is the sadistic way he conducted his training programs. If anyone complained about it, he would shuffle them off to other regions. He was a womanizer, too.”
“Have you ever fired a gun, Mr. Okuma?”
“…Why would you ask that?”
“I was just wondering.”
“I fired one during training,” Okuma answered. “They gave me an E aptitude for the military division. Haven’t shot one since then.”
“I see.”
That probably meant he had been dragged behind that smoke-belching truck. Okuma could likely sense from Miika’s reaction that she was envisioning that picture, and it made him scowl.
“For one thing,” he said, “the idea that you can accurately fire a gun is ridiculous. There’s over a meter of distance between your brain and your fingertips. The only people who can move objects over a meter away with absolute precision are psychics or freaks.”
“So you only consider your brain to be ‘yourself’?”
“Of course. Otherwise, who would bother to create prosthetic limbs?”
Miika felt like she was starting to understand what made this man tick, although she’d never wished to be privy to that knowledge.