Chapter Text
"Ishigami has turned himself in. But he wasn't saying that he was helping as an accomplice. He asserts that he's the one who killed Togashi!"
The investigation of the murder of Togashi Shinji has now reached a conclusion; Ishigami has called in to confess that he was the killer! He's not saying that he helped Ms Hanaoka with the murder, he's claiming that he was acting alone. As the principal offender! So now everyone was rushing to secure the evidence and conclude the case, yet Kaoru felt that this turn of events didn’t feel right.
Something felt wrong. Up until this point, there wasn't any clear indication that Ishigami was involved besides Yukawa's suspicion. Even Kusanagi admitted a few days ago that they didn't have any basis to direct their suspicion on Ishigami. So why did he turn himself in at this point now?
As soon as Kusanagi finished interrogating Ishigami, Utsumi walked out of the observation room to talk to him.
"Kusanagi-san, don't you think that this is strange? Do you really buy what Ishigami was saying earlier?" Utsumi spoke right away as Kusanagi hastily shushed her. They quickly bowed to the other task force members who have started coming out to head towards Ishigami's apartment.
"Not too loud..." he said, before dragging her away from the other officers.
Kusanagi dragged her towards the staircase before closing the door behind them. Once he was sure that they were alone, he sighed at her. "In general, I don't see any reason to doubt it. You heard what the guy was saying earlier, it was very detailed. Everything that Ishigami said was in line with everything that we've found so far!"
"But—!"
"Let's see if the new evidence was in line with everything that he claim it was. We can discuss it further after that."
Hours later, they were able to recover the supposed murder weapons from Ishigami's apartment. They also managed to find a hole in the wall and the mike that Ishigami claimed he used to spy on Hanaoka. And when they went back to ask Ms Hanaoka about it, the lady showed them the letters that Ishigami had sent to her. Everything had turned out to be just like Ishigami had claimed. That he was the classic example of a typical stalker.
During the task force meeting, Yuge-san informed everyone that it was confirmed that Ishigami had been frequenting a public phone not far from his apartment complex for the past few weeks. A shopkeeper from the area told them that they saw someone matching Ishigami's description. There wasn't any hole to what Ishigami had told them!
Still, Utsumi couldn't quite accept it. Despite what the evidence had shown them, she couldn't imagine Ishigami to be the kind of person to be doing all those things that he said. It just didn't make any sense!
"Kusanagi-san, something doesn't feel right. Don't you think so? Because I don't think it was just me feeling this way. This seemed to be too perfect!"
Kusanagi let out a soft chuckle as he smiled weakly at her. "You really starting to sound like Yukawa when you talk like this. But then again it's been a while that you two have worked together..."
He shook his head. "But you're right. It does feel strange. But there's really no hole in his story. Everything that he claimed in his story all checked out."
Utsumi nodded slowly as she also thought the same. Kusanagi ran his hand over his hair as he scratched his head.
"It still bothered me why Ishigami suddenly confessed his crime despite claiming that Ms Hanaoka betrayed him. Because if that was true, why didn't he pin the crime on her instead? His reasoning didn't make sense. Why still protect your so-called accomplice after supposedly being betrayed by them? Granted the guy somehow grew a conscience after all this, but I still felt weird. But between accepting this weird confession and closing the case or stubbornly insisting that we need to continue investigating, which do you think was preferable by the top brass?"
Utsumi sighed before turning back at Kusanagi. "I get why the chief was satisfied now that we had someone to charge with the crime. We can finally close this case and there's no need to extend it further. We already got our 'perp'. But I just don't like it."
Kusanagi just shook his head. "Things would've been different if there was something that didn't fit but there's nothing like that. Like the thing with the bicycle. We can assume all we like about it but it'll just be a conjecture. We got nothing to prove that Ishigami planted all of the evidence there and the guy can just claim that he had no idea that the victim came there on a bike. There's nothing strange about that. At this rate, we got no grounds to even claim that this wasn't what actually happened."
Utsumi let out another sigh before turning towards her senior officer.
"So we had no choice but to accept that Ishigami's our criminal now." She bit her lips. "So do we give up now?"
Utsumi shook her head and frowned at him. "I just don't like this. It felt as if we were students of Ishigami; he's given us some kind of an assignment and he also gave us the answer scheme. We're being tested to see if we could come out with a different answer instead of the one presented to us. It's like a challenge for us to prove him wrong."
Kusanagi stared at her. "So you think that guy was lying to us? You think that Ishigami was innocent?"
Utsumi looked up at Kusanagi but she didn't say anything. How could she... when she had nothing to back her answer aside from her gut feeling as well as Yukawa's faith in his old friend? How could she prove anything was wrong when their sole suspect has already given them a perfect answer to solve everything about the case?
"Utsumi, go see Yukawa." Utsumi blinked at the man as Kusanagi just sighed at her. "Yukawa should know something, I'm sure about it... but he just wouldn't tell me about it. He wouldn't tell me, but he may open up to you. He's been acting strange all these times and I'm sure that you've noticed it. Even before we started suspecting Ishigami, that guy had been paying more attention to his old friend since we told him about it. There must be something that tipped Yukawa that something was wrong with Ishigami."
Utsumi nodded, as she was reminded of the time she saw Yukawa visiting Benten-tei with Ishigami. She hadn't pressed Yukawa about it but Kusanagi's right, Yukawa must have noticed something. It might explain why the man had been behaving strangely, with regard to a certain mathematician.
"I'm on it."
×××
"Yukawa-sensei should be at the laboratory..."
That was what Kuribayashi said to her, just as she happened to stumble into the old lab assistant on the way to find the man. At first, the old lab assistant tried to stop her from seeing the professor. Because he thought it was not the best of times for her to see the man since Professor Yukawa had been depressed as of late, and not even in any mood to attend to his students' projects as well. The old assistant was somewhat aware that it had something to do with the case Utsumi and Kusanagi had been investigating, but he didn't dare to ask Yukawa about it.
He asked for Utsumi to be understanding to the professor, knowing that she would go see him anyway. But of course, why wouldn't she do that? Because she knew how devastated the man would be after finding out that his old friend had gone as far as painting himself as a despicable stalker, just to protect a woman who was no more than just a neighbour to him.
Or so she thought.
The laboratory was barely lit when she entered the place, with nary anyone inside. If not because Kuribayashi already told her that the man was inside by himself, she would've thought that the laboratory had been empty. Utsumi glanced up towards the balcony above. She remembered that there was an old leather couch placed on the balcony. Seeing that there was no one on the floor beneath the balcony other than herself, no doubt Yukawa should be hiding somewhere up the balcony.
And she was right as she climbed up the metal staircase and spotted the man on the couch.
Her heart almost broke when she saw the state the man was in. Yukawa was lounging listlessly on the couch, his eyes seemed intent on staring at the ceiling but it didn't look as if he was actually seeing anything. At first glance, it may look as if the man was just resting lazily by himself but there was a sense of remoteness on the man. As if he wasn't really here, as if his soul has just left him. Yukawa had a pained look on his face, far too much sorrow than she had ever seen the man wear on his face. It might just be the shock at finding out the devastating news about his old friend but just as Kusanagi told her earlier, there might be something else that was bothering Yukawa.
"Professor Yukawa..."
It took a while for the man to register her presence before Yukawa started to straighten himself on the couch. But still, the man remained silent. She sighed. There's no way she could try get him to tell her anything when he was like this. She might as well just give the man time to prepare himself to confide to her.
Utsumi walked towards a nearby table and put down her bag before slowly approaching the man. She saw his empty cup on a small table nearby and picked it up. She glanced up to look at him again and could see how worn out the man had become. This case really took a toll on him...
But of course, she barely noticed it when she called him earlier to update him of things regarding Ishigami. It would've been quite a shock for Yukawa to find out that his friend had confessed to be a stalker and a murderer. He probably couldn't accept that as the truth.
"I'll make coffee..." she said before walking up towards the nearby spiral staircase and down towards the small area where Yukawa usually kept his instant coffee stash. She barely stepped off the spiral staircase before finally hearing Yukawa speak.
"When I saw Ishigami again—" Utsumi turned around slowly as the man continued speaking, "—he asked me something."
"How did you stay so young? I envy that."
Utsumi continued staring at the man from the lower floor, making sure to pay her utmost attention to every word that was spoken by the man upstairs.
"I was surprised. Ishigami was never the type of guy to care too much about the way he looked. That was when I realized—" Yukawa took a long pause as if the words had been painful for him to say out loud, "—he had fallen in love."
She waited a bit more in case Yukawa had any other thing to say. When he didn't add anything more to it she walked back up the spiral staircase to look closer at him. It's exactly what Kusanagi had thought, Yukawa had noticed something important. It was what prompted the man to investigate more into the case, not even telling them anything as to why he was concerned about it. And it seemed that Yukawa had finally found an answer...
The missing piece of the puzzle...
"Please tell me, what exactly did he do?" she asked, as she almost reached the top of the spiral staircase.
"Me exposing the truth of this case—" Yukawa finally got up from the couch, "—will not make anyone happy."
Utsumi climbed the last few steps and stepped onto the balcony to face Yukawa's back.
"Can you really live with that? The one who said that Ishigami wasn't capable of any murder, that was you, Professor Yukawa!"
She sighed. "The Professor Yukawa that I know wouldn't be swayed by his own emotions. He remained logical... and pursued the truth harder than anyone else." She bit her lips before continuing, "If you find yourself unable to endure the pain of the truth, let me bear it with you."
How long has it been since that incident during one Christmas night when the two of them had almost died? That time back then felt like ages now but she never completely forget about it. That time, it was barely a year since they started working together. They only barely began to get along well before she started thinking that she shouldn't depend on Yukawa too much for his help in her cases. And then she got tricked and strapped onto a bomb that could take out half of Tokyo with it. Because of Yukawa, she was alive until now and they've continued working together for years since then.
Did their friendship mean nothing to him? Couldn't he depend on her the same way she depended on him all those years ago? Couldn't he trust her the same as how Yukawa trusted Kusanagi?
Yukawa turned around to face her. "Will you hear me out? As a friend... not as a police officer."
"A friend?" she asked as Yukawa nodded faintly.
Did that mean that what he would say next could affect the case greatly in a way she couldn't imagine? Would he cut off his friendship with her if she said no?
"Fine," she said anyway because she thought Yukawa wouldn't continue until she reassure him that she will listen to him as a friend. And not acting as a police officer and treating him as just—just an informant. A mere informant whose purpose was only to give information and help her solve the case.
Yukawa's expression barely changed as he spoke again.
"You need to let me solve this case in my own way."