The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [107]
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.” She meant to speak forcefully, but her voice came out weak and trembling. “If … If you have something to tell me, please do.”
“He killed that man, the one that was found by the Old Edogawa.” Yukawa took a deep breath. “Ishigami was the killer. Not you, or your daughter. He’s not turning himself in for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s guilty of murder.”
Yasuko gaped, not comprehending what she was hearing.
“However,” Yukawa added, “that body did not belong to Shinji Togashi. That was not your ex-husband. He was a complete stranger made to appear to be your ex-husband.”
Yasuko knitted her brow in disbelief, but when she saw the physicist’s eyes blinking with sorrow, the tears gathering on the lenses of his glasses, suddenly she understood. She gasped, darting a hand to her mouth, almost yelling in surprise. The blood drained from her face.
“Looks like you finally understand what I’m trying to tell you,” Yukawa said softly. “Yes. In order to protect you, Ishigami committed murder—on March 10. The day after Shinji Togashi was killed.”
Yasuko felt her head spinning. She swayed dizzily, struggling to remain upright on the bench. Her hands and legs had gone cold; her skin prickled as if with a thousand thorns.
* * *
Even from a distance, it was clear to Kusanagi that Yukawa had told the woman the truth. Her face had gone completely pale. Unsurprising, Kusanagi thought. He didn’t know anyone who wouldn’t be shocked by the story, least of all someone so directly involved.
Kusanagi still didn’t entirely believe it himself. He had practically scoffed when Yukawa had told him his theory on the way there. Not that he could imagine why his friend would joke about such things—it just seemed like such an unrealistic story.
“That’s impossible,” Kusanagi had said. “He killed someone else to cover up Yasuko Hanaoka’s crime? Who would do something so stupid? And for that matter, who did he kill?”
Yukawa had looked even sadder at that question and had shaken his head. “I don’t know what his name was. But I know where he was from.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“There are people in this world who could disappear overnight and no one would bother looking for them, or worry where they had gone. I’ll bet no one even filed a missing persons report. Whoever it was most likely had no contact with their family anymore, if their family is even alive.” Yukawa had pointed back along the riverbank down the path where they had just been walking. “You saw them back there.”
Kusanagi hadn’t understood what Yukawa was saying at first. But as he looked back down the riverbank, a light had flashed on in his head. “The homeless!”
Yukawa hadn’t nodded. He had only said, “Did you notice the fellow collecting those empty cans? He knows everything about the people living in his community. I talked to him the other day, and he told me there was this guy who had joined them only a month before. Not a friend, just someone who had chosen to live there with them. He hadn’t built a shack of his own yet, and still had an aversion to sleeping on cardboard. The Can Man told me that everyone was like that at first—it’s hard to give up your pride—but in the end, they all broke. Anyhow, this new arrival disappeared one day, without so much as a word of parting. The Can Man wondered what had happened to him, but that was all. Some of the other people living there must’ve noticed, too, but no one talked about it. It’s not unusual in their world for people to just go missing like that.
“Incidentally,” Yukawa had continued, “this man disappeared on or around March 10. He was about fifty years old. He’d put on a little weight, but was otherwise of average build.”
The body on the Old Edogawa had been found on March 11.
“I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but Ishigami must have learned of Yasuko Hanaoka’s crime, and he’d decided to help her conceal it. He realized that it wouldn’t be enough to simply dispose of the body. If the police should find and identify it, they would inevitably come knocking on her