by Eiji Mikage
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.
13
I got off the elevator. Ken, who’d been left waiting outside Interrogation Room Six, immediately pounced.
“Is Shota really dead?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“How?!”
“They’re still looking into it.”
In fact by now the forensics team was pretty sure of the cause of death, but there was no need for me to tell him that. Ken had on a poker face, but he was starting to sweat.
And I knew why. Shota had been killed for helping Reina take revenge, and now Ken was wondering if he was next. Based on the taped interrogations, Shota didn’t seem to know, but Ken also must have been involved in Reina’s scheme.
Koichiro Myoko stood behind Ken, looking haggard. It was 3:05 A.M., but it wasn’t only the late hour that made his face so pale.
Koichiro glanced to his left. “Who’s she?”
In contrast to the other two, the woman was elegant and poised. She bowed deeply.
“My name is Otoha Tamachi. I was fortunate to be close with Reina when we were in school.”
“I see…” Koichiro said. He looked confused.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
Koichiro hesitated before responding. “I realize I’m saying this as Reina’s father, but she looks so much like Reina. Forgive me…I know that’s kind of a weird thing to say, isn’t it?”
Ken wiped the sweat from his face and agreed, “No, Koichiro, I know what you mean. I realize this Tamachi-san is a different person, of course, but…It’s not just how she looks. It’s also how she carries herself, her whole air.”
The two of them looked suspiciously at the woman, who was unfazed.
“Tee-hee,” she laughed. “It’s such an honor to be compared to Reina. She was amazing.”
* * *
—
We gathered again in Interrogation Room Six. The six of us made the interrogation room, which was one of the larger ones in the police station, cramped. Ken sat on the sofa, and Koichiro and the woman calling herself Otoha stood to the side. Yamaji sat in a chair behind a desk facing them all, and Dr. Higano and I stood next to him. Dr. Higano’s familiar tablet PC and glass cube puzzle lay on the desk.
Noi-tan had apparently completed Dr. Higano’s previous request and discovered newspapers with the articles he was looking for:
* * *
—
Central Construction Names Ken Nakahigashi, Third Son of Founder, Next President
* * *
—
I read the article that followed:
* * *
—
In a press release, major construction contractor Central Construction announced that current president Heiji Nakahigashi would be stepping down from his position as president this year due to health concerns. The company also announced that Ken Nakahigashi, the former president’s third son, would succeed him in his position. Previously, the current Vice President and Director Tateki Nakahigashi, Nakahigashi’s eldest son, had been expected to succeed, but Nakahigashi Sr. reversed his decision and chose Ken Nakahigashi instead. The decision was approved by the Board of Directors, but the sudden change does appear to have sparked some confusion within the company. Ken Nakahigashi is 27 ye
ars old and a graduate of Teito University’s economics program. Though he is Nakahigashi’s third-born son, he was the child of an extramarital affair and is not biologically related to Nakahigashi’s wife, Yoko. Ken Nakahigashi has served as head of R&D at the Yokohama Branch of Central Construction and is well respected within the company for his work. However, a promotion from section chief to president is a nearly unprecedented move.
* * *
—
While I read, Nakahigashi leveled his gaze at me, but not for long.
“Yeah,” he said. “Reina and I set my dad up with an underaged model. We threatened him so I could become president.” He sneered. “He was a regular at the secret club for a long time. But I knew that he’d always evade the charges unless we had airtight proof of a real crime. So we got Reina in with the club. We planned meticulously, and when we were finally ready to put everything into action, we set up my dad with the model through a producer I was friends with. Our plan worked like a charm.”
While he confessed, Ken allowed a little smile to float up on his face. Yamaji, on the other hand, grumpily put a hand to his stubble.
“I mean, a crime’s a crime,” Yamaji said. “But is an underage model really enough to take down a president of a major corporation? It’s really not that big of a deal, right?”
“The scale of the crime doesn’t matter when you’re stirring up a scandal,” Ken said. “All that really matters is how you manipulate the masses. Using their jealousy is especially effective. Such as people in the establishment arrogantly abusing their position of power to sleep with some of the talent an ordinary person only sees on TV. Whenever that happens, your average Joe just eats it up.
“The righteous indignation of the masses is just a cover,” he continued. “The public just wants to vent their spleen—pretty distant from the ‘justice’ they claim—until the scandal starts to lose its flavor. So it doesn’t matter if the crime is minor, as long as who it’s pinned on can’t talk their way out of it. And that was certainly the case with our charge: lewd acts with a minor.
“Not to mention,” Ken added smoothly, “any other important, powerful people who were also part of the secret club would’ve been dragged out into public because of my dad’s case. Another reason he had to give in to our threats so he didn’t make everyone around him go down, too.”
While Ken had been speaking, Dr. Higano had listened carefully, nodding intermittently. He asked, “You must’ve needed a lot of time to prepare. When did you get to know Reina?”
“When she was 18. I remember she was still in college. She researched everything about my family in her hunt for revenge and approached me. She aligned her interests with mine, which was getting to the top of the company, and we joined forces.”
It seemed that Reina had definitely been using Ken and Shota to take revenge for her father.
“Were you aware that Shota was also helping her with her plan?” I asked.
“Reina never said a word about him. My role was just one of support from the sidelines, so I figured she must have had some grunts on the ground. I was surprised to hear she was sleeping with him, but she convinced me that it was necessary to make him her loyal puppet. Logically it made sense—that’s the kind of woman Reina Myoko was.”
“Do you think some kind of syndicate was involved in her murder?”
“No, I don’t. If a syndicate wanted to shut her up, there were faster ways to do it—waiting until my father announced his resignation would be too late. Besides, it’s almost unthinkable that an organization trying to keep someone quiet would draw attention to itself by making her murder look like a Masquerade copy-cat crime.”
I followed his logic completely.
“But if Shota was killed,” he said, “then maybe this syndicate is involved, even if it doesn’t make sense. That’s what I’m starting to think.”
“Shota killed himself,” Yamaji said bluntly.
“Is that so? Then…that means the syndicate isn’t involved? That would be great news for me.”
“I’m sure it would. Everything went as you planned, and you successfully removed your father from the president’s seat. Come to think of it, after that you didn’t need Reina anymore. Were you planning to call off the engagement?”
“Absolutely not. Reina was working with me and thinking about what came next. She helped carry out the plan precisely because she saw the benefits of being the wife of the president. And I’d been impressed by her skills and also wanted her to be my wife.”
“But Reina had something different in mind,” Yamaji said.
He put a lollipop in his mouth and twirled it around. Oh man…That was a sign he was particularly displeased.
Ken had a complicated home environment, and I could imagine him resorting to dirty tactics to take the position he wanted.
However, Yamaji was another matter. He wouldn’t forgive someone for that, no matter what their reasons were.
“Why don’t we talk about something that the Doc and Princess here don’t know about? During the questioning you were clearly hesitant to talk about the whole thing at the café. I thought that was strange, so I had one of my guys look into it. He got to talk to the café’s waiter.”
Though Nakahigashi hadn’t flinched once while confessing to how he trapped his father, now his face suddenly stiffened.
Yamaji continued: “You argued with the victim at Sea’s Ale…but I guess it was more like you just yelling at her. This attracted the waiter’s attention, so he listened in. You were saying that—”
“Wait,” Nakahigashi interrupted. “That’s enough. I’ll tell them myself.” He gritted his teeth for a moment, and tried to arrange his expression to one of nonchalance. “Reina was breaking up with me.”
“Aha. So she had finished using you,” Yamaji noted sarcastically and then stared grimly at Ken.
“I don’t know why she’d do something like that. It was heartless of her to change her mind. She was completely ungrateful as to how much I had helped her accomplish. You could call it a betrayal.”
I never expected someone like Ken to be using the word “heartless.”
“And what about that thing you did?” Yamaji prodded.
Nakahigashi reluctantly nodded. “I was trying to tell her to calm the fuck down. To let her know it wasn’t like she’d accomplished everything on her own. I’d bought her these Jimmy Choo pumps for her birthday. I made her take them off right there in the restaurant and took them from her. I was trying to make her understand that everything we’d gotten, even the things she was wearing, we’d gotten together. She didn’t really respond to that. She just left the shoes behind and left the restaurant.”
“So that’s the empathy you bring to the table as president of a big company?” Yamaji commented.
Ken’s cheek twitched in annoyance. He ignored Yamaji and continued.
“That was a mistake. If I’d known something like this would happen afterward, I never would’ve made her do something that would draw so much attention.”
“You made a grown woman walk home in her bare feet. Obviously it’s easy for you to say that now.”
“The restaurant was in the central part of Odaiba. There were plenty of stores nearby where she could’ve bought other shoes. She didn’t walk home in bare feet…I just wanted her to reconsider. I wanted to marry her.” Ken sounded like he was starting to choke back tears. “I wanted Reina.”
He seemed to be telling the truth. For the first time I thought I could see his feelings for her—attachment, love—welling up in his eyes.
His love for her was warped, but you couldn’t say it didn’t exist. If it didn’t, he wouldn’t have been party to her scheme for so many years.
Click, click click, click.
The sound of Dr. Higano’s cube puzzle spinning began to echo through the now-silent room.
He was spi
nning the puzzle at an incredible speed. It was almost frightening how quickly it was moving, but a second later he had completed it. His face was blank, so I had absolutely no idea what he was thinking.
Dr. Higano puffed a sigh and said, “Ken took Reina’s pumps, so she had to buy new ones. She bought the new shoes immediately. But they weren’t worn in yet, so she got blisters on her heels. Which is why the skin was peeling off her corpse.”
Come to think of it, Dr. Higano had brought up the blisters of her feet at the first questioning.
But…Was that detail so important that he had to repeat it now?
“Huh?” I asked.
Why was it so important?
As always, Dr. Higano had a calm, collected look on his face. Yet for some reason I could not identify, I was petrified.
But when I looked around the room, no one else seemed to be put off by him.
Am I overthinking it?…Maybe so. I looked at the doctor more closely. He seemed incredibly normal. I didn’t know why I felt so strange.
Some deep-seated fear rising within me had me shaking. But why? I couldn’t stop the trembling.
Koichiro Myoko had kept completely silent through this recital, his face pained.
“Ken,” he started to say. “I know you loved Reina in your own way. I also know that there were things Reina was using you for. My daughter was dishonest at times, that’s just a fact. However—”
Koichiro grabbed Ken by the collar and threw him from the sofa.
“How dare you!” he yelled, and began to pummel him.
Ken was helpless in front of Koichiro’s sudden onslaught. Koichiro pressed him down, sat astride him, and gave him a solid punch in the face. Yamaji rushed to break it up, but before he could, Koichiro opened his eyes wide, seemed to understand what he’d done, and stopped himself. He was breathing heavily, trying hard to calm himself down.
Ken struggled up and coughed. Something small flew out of his mouth—one of his front teeth.
Reina’s father was still in shock at his own actions. Ken looked at him, then covered his eyes and lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t say anything so you wouldn’t suspect me. That was clearly a mistake.”