The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [65]
Kusanagi took a deep breath and straightened his back. The young woman sitting in the seat across from him shot him a dubious look.
The detective glanced up at the subway map above the door. Think I’ll make a stop in Hamacho.
* * *
It had been a while since Ishigami last sat behind the wheel of a car, but it only took him about thirty minutes to get used to driving again. Still, it took him a while to find a suitable place to park on the road near his destination. Every spot he checked seemed like it would put him in someone else’s way. Finally he found a small truck that had been sloppily parked across two spaces and managed to squeeze in behind it.
It was his second time in a rental car. He’d been obliged to pick one up once while he was a university assistant in order to ferry students around on a field trip to a power plant. That time he drove a large van that seated seven, but today he was in a small economy car, which he found much easier to handle.
Ishigami’s eyes went to a small building ahead of him on the right. The sign on the building read “Hikari Graphics, Ltd.” It was Kuniaki Kudo’s company.
It hadn’t been difficult to track the place down. He had the name Kudo from the detective, Kusanagi, and he knew the man ran a printing company. Ishigami had gone online, found a site with links to printing companies, and checked every single one in Tokyo. Hikari Graphics was the only one with a CEO named Kudo.
Ishigami had gone to the rental car office directly after finishing up at school and picked up a car he had reserved in advance.
There was danger involved in renting a car. The transaction would leave a trail. But he had weighed the risks for a long time before deciding to act.
When the digital display on the dashboard read 5:50 P.M., several men and women emerged from the front entrance. Ishigami spotted Kudo amongst them, and his body stiffened.
Eyes fixed on the group, he reached for the digital camera in the passenger seat. Flicking it on, he looked through the view-finder. There. He adjusted the focus and zoomed in as far as the lens allowed.
Kudo was dressed impeccably. Ishigami didn’t even know where one would go to buy that kind of clothes. Again, it occurred to him that this man was Yasuko’s type. Of course, not just Yasuko, but most women, if given a choice between him and Kudo, would have chosen Kudo.
Ishigami snapped a picture, feeling a pulse of envy course through him. He had set the camera not to flash, but even so Kudo showed up beautifully on the LCD. The sun was high enough and angled well so as to light his subject clearly.
Kudo was going around to the back of the building where, Ishigami had already ascertained, the company’s private parking lot was located. The mathematician waited, watching. After a few moments a single Mercedes rolled out into the street. It was green. Spotting Kudo in the driver’s seat, Ishigami hurriedly started his own engine.
He drove, eyes fixed on the Mercedes’s brake lights. Driving was difficult enough, but following someone else made it even harder. The worst part was timing the traffic lights. Luckily, Kudo was a conservative driver. He drove at or under the speed limit, and always stopped at yellow lights.
Ishigami began to worry that he might be driving too close to his mark and would be noticed. Still, now that he had started, he had to keep following.
As he drove, the mathematician occasionally glanced at the car’s GPS. The roads were mostly unfamiliar to him, but he could see on the map that Kudo’s Mercedes was heading for Shinagawa.
The number of cars on the road increased, and it became harder and harder to keep up the chase. Ishigami let himself get too far behind, and a truck got between him and Kudo. He couldn’t see the Mercedes at all, and while he was debating whether or not to switch lanes, the traffic light turned red ahead of him. It looked like the truck was at the front of the line—which meant that the Mercedes had driven on ahead.
I lost him already? Ishigami swore under his breath.
But when the