The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [76]
“Sounds about right.”
“And according to the mama we just talked to, Yasuko was on the phone with her after that. She left a message asking for her to call, even though it wasn’t about anything serious. So the mama calls her a little after one o’clock, and they talk for thirty minutes.”
“So? What of it?”
“Well, when I asked her for an alibi, why do you think Yasuko didn’t mention the phone call?”
“Well, I suppose she didn’t think it was necessary.”
“Why not?” Kusanagi stopped and turned to the junior detective. “If she used her home phone to call someone, that’d be proof she was at home.”
Kishitani stopped, too. He pursed his lips. “That may be so; but from Yasuko Hanaoka’s perspective, telling you about her night on the town must have seemed like enough. I bet if you’d asked her about what she did when she got home, she’d have told you about the phone call.”
“You think that’s the only reason she didn’t say anything?”
“Can you think of another? I mean, if she was hiding the fact that she didn’t have an alibi, that would be one thing, but she had an alibi—she just didn’t tell us about it. Seems a little strange to get worked up over that.”
Kusanagi turned from his partner and resumed walking, scowling faintly. The junior detective had taken Hanaoka’s side even before they knocked at her door that first night. It was no use expecting anything like an objective opinion from the man now.
Kusanagi’s noontime discussion with Yukawa resurfaced in his mind. The physicist had said that, had Ishigami been involved, it was unlikely the murder had been premeditated. It was too sloppy for that. He had seemed quite adamant about that point.
“If he had planned it, he never would’ve used the movie theater for an alibi,” Yukawa had noted. “He would’ve known that the movie story was unconvincing—true enough, as evidenced by your suspicion. Ishigami would have understood that. And it raises another, larger question. What possible reason would Ishigami have to assist Yasuko Hanaoka in murdering Togashi? Even if Togashi had been giving her a hard time and she had gone to her neighbor for help, Ishigami would’ve thought of a different solution for the problem. Murder would have been his last choice.”
“Why, because he’s not vicious enough?”
Yukawa had shaken his head, his eyes cool. “It’s not a question of temperament. Murder isn’t the most logical way to escape a difficult situation. It only leads to a different difficult situation. Ishigami would never engage in something so clearly counterproductive. Of course,” he had added, “the converse is also true. That is, he’s quite capable of committing an atrocity, provided that it’s the most logical course of action.”
“So how do you think Ishigami could’ve been involved?”
“If he was involved, then I think he was not in a position to assist with the actual murder. In other words, by the time he became aware of the situation, Togashi was already dead. So what were his options? If it had been possible to conceal what had happened, he would have tried that. If it was impossible, he would have done what he could to hinder the eventual investigation. He would have given explicit instructions to Yasuko Hanaoka and her daughter, telling them how to answer detectives’ questions and what evidence to reveal at what time. A script for them to follow, in other words.”
Which meant, according to Yukawa’s theory, everything Yasuko Hanaoka and Misato had told them so far wasn’t their own, unsullied testimony, but one prepared by Ishigami, who had been behind them, pulling the strings the whole time.
“Of course,” the physicist had added quietly, “this is all merely my conjecture—a theory constructed on the premise that Ishigami was somehow involved. That premise itself might be wrong. In fact, I hope it’s wrong. I hope deep in my heart that he had nothing to do with it.”
Yukawa’s expression when he told Kusanagi this had been unusually pained—and,