The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [109]
“So the bike came in handy in more than one way for him,” Kusanagi said, smacking himself on the forehead with his own fist.
“I heard that when the bicycle was found both tires were flat. Ishigami did that to prevent someone else from riding off with it. He did everything he could to make sure the Hanaoka’s alibi would stand.”
“But why provide them with such a weak alibi, then? We still haven’t found decisive evidence that they really were at that movie theater.”
“Yet you haven’t been able to find evidence they weren’t there either, have you?” Yukawa had pointed out. “A weak alibi that nevertheless stands up under pressure. That was the trap he laid for you, don’t you see? If he had given them an ironclad alibi, the police would have had to point their suspicions elsewhere. They might even suspect a bait and switch. Someone might even get the bright idea that the victim they’d found wasn’t really Shinji Togashi. Ishigami was afraid of that, so he made everything point to Yasuko Hanaoka as the killer, and Shinji Togashi as the victim. Once the police took the bait, they were hooked.”
Kusanagi had groaned. It was just as Yukawa had said. Once they’d determined that the body was likely Shinji Togashi’s, they started to suspect Yasuko. Why? Because her alibi was flimsy. So they continued suspecting her, which meant they’d never suspected that the body wasn’t that of her ex-husband.
“What a frightening man,” Kusanagi had whispered. And Yukawa had agreed. “It was something you said that led me to the true nature of his scheme, actually.”
“Something I said?”
“Remember what Ishigami told you about his method of designing mathematics exams? About coming at the test-taker from a blind spot created by their own assumptions? Like making an algebra problem look like a geometry problem?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“It’s the same pattern. He made a trick body look like a trick alibi.”
Kusanagi had practically yelped.
“Remember afterward, when you showed me Ishigami’s work schedule from his school? He’d taken the morning of the tenth as well as the morning of the eleventh off from work. That’s what tipped me off to the fact that the incident Ishigami really wanted to hide had taken place not the night of the tenth, but the night of the ninth.”
That incident was the murder of Shinji Togashi at the hands of Yasuko Hanaoka.
Everything Yukawa had said fit the case precisely. In fact, everything the physicist had been obsessing over—from the stolen bicycle to the half-burned clothes—had turned out to be vital pieces of the puzzle. Kusanagi had to admit that he, along with every other detective that had looked into the case, had been caught in a labyrinth of Ishigami’s design.
Yet it all still seemed too unreal to be true. Killing a person to hide a murder—who would think of something like that? Of course, that’s the point. He didn’t want us to think of it.
“There’s another side to his setup,” Yukawa said then, as though he could read Kusanagi’s thoughts. “Ishigami planned to turn himself in in Yasuko’s place should things fall apart. But if he were really taking her place of his own free will, there was always the danger that his resolve might waver. He might even break under repeated police questioning and cough up the truth. I doubt he feels any such threat to his resolve now, though. All he has to do is claim that he was the killer, which, of course, is quite true. He is a murderer, and deserves to be in prison. In exchange for paying his debt to society, he gets to protect, utterly and forever, the person whom he loves with all his heart.”
“So when did Ishigami realize the jig was up?”
“I told him as much, in a way that only he would understand. What I told you earlier, about there being no useless