The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [96]
“I thought it might be him, maybe, but I wasn’t sure. He never gave his name.”
“I see. Can you tell us a little more about these calls?”
Yasuko explained that someone unknown started phoning her in the evening about three months ago. Without giving his name, the caller had suddenly started saying things about her personal life—things no one could possibly have known unless they had been spying on her. She was frightened, afraid that she had a stalker; but she’d been baffled by the question of who it might be. After that, the phone had rung every night at the same time, but she had never answered—except for once, when she’d picked up the receiver without thinking. Then the man on the other end said: “I understand you’ve been too busy to answer your phone. So I have a suggestion. I will call every evening, and you only need to answer if you need me for something. I will let the phone ring five times, you just need to pick up before the fifth ring.”
Yasuko had reluctantly agreed, and since that time, the phone rang every night. Apparently, the stranger was calling her from a public phone. She never answered.
“You couldn’t tell it was Ishigami from his voice?”
“Not really. We’d spoken so little. And I never picked up except for those two times, so I can’t even really remember what the voice sounded like now. In any case, I can hardly imagine someone like him doing such a thing. I mean, he’s a high school teacher!”
“That’s no guarantee of character these days, I’m afraid,” Kishitani offered. Then, as if embarrassed by his own interruption, he quickly lowered his head.
Kusanagi reflected on how the junior detective had taken the Hanaokas’ side since the very beginning. Ishigami’s turning himself in must have come as a great relief to Kishitani.
“Was there ever anything else, besides the calls?” Kusanagi asked.
“Well…” Yasuko rose and retrieved three envelopes from a nearby drawer. There was no sender or return address marked on any of them; on the front of each was only the name “Yasuko Hanaoka.”
“And these are?”
“Letters I found in the mailbox on my door. There were some others, but I threw them out. I just thought I should keep these as evidence in case there was ever a more serious problem—people are always doing that on television, you know. I didn’t much like having them, but I kept these three, just in case.”
Kusanagi opened the envelopes.
Each contained a single sheet of paper with words that had clearly been typed on a computer. None of the letters was particularly long:
I notice you’ve been putting on more makeup recently. And wearing fancier clothes. That’s not like you. Plainer attire suits you better. It also bothers me that you’ve been coming home late. You should come home right after work is finished.
Is something bothering you? If it is, please don’t hesitate to tell me about it. That’s why I call you every night, you know. There are many matters on which I could advise you. You can’t trust anyone else. You shouldn’t trust anyone else. Just me.
I have a feeling something terrible has happened. I fear you’ve betrayed me. Now, I know with all my heart that you would never do such a thing, but if you ever did, I’m not sure I would ever be able to forgive you. I am the only man for you. I am the only one who can protect you.
“Do you mind if I take these with me?”
“They’re all yours.”
“Anything else like this happen recently?”
“To me? No, nothing really…” Yasuko’s voice trailed off.
“To your daughter then?”
“Well, no. But … there was something with Mr. Kudo.”
“Mr. Kuniaki Kudo? What happened to him?”
“When I met him for dinner the other day, he said he’d received an odd letter. There was no signature or return address, but the letter told him to stay away from me. There were some photographs in the envelope, too, photos of him, taken without his knowledge.”
“So your stalker was stalking him, too?”
The detectives exchanged looks. Given all they had seen thus far, the writer of the letters would have to have been Ishigami. Kusanagi thought about Manabu Yukawa.