A Cop's Eyes (16 page)

“Where were you until you came home?”

“Around … I rode my scooter. I ran out of gas, so I went to a gas station and ate a hamburger and then rode around again.”

Natsume smiled when Yuma said this. “Of course, you're young, you have a big appetite.”

Yuma raised his face with a puzzled expression.

“You'd already had rice omelet for dinner, right?”

“I didn't eat it …”

“I see.” Natsume nodded, then continued, “So you got on your bike for a while and came home. Do you remember around what time?”

“I think it was past 1 a.m. I was surprised because there were a lot of fire trucks and ambulances parked around.”

“You intended to come home after your mom did, is that right?”

Yuma nodded. “Because I didn't want to come home to just him …”

“In that case, you weren't anywhere near the apartment at twelve o'clock. That's too bad. I wanted to ask if you there were any suspicious persons around at that hour.”

“Dunno …” Yuma shook his head.

After that, Natsume asked Yuma which gasoline station he'd
stopped at and wrote it down in a memo pad.

Keiko was anxious over just how much of Yuma's story Natsume believed. Her son had been riding his scooter around twelve o'clock, at the time of the fire. He didn't have a proper alibi.

“Thank you.”

When Natsume made to stand up from the sofa, Yuma said, forcefully for the first time, “You don't think our fire was part of the serial arson case, do you?”

“The police need to account for many possibilities as we conduct an investigation. Although questioning you, the victim's family, like this, even as you're grieving over the loss of your adoptive father, pains me.”

“I'm not really grieving. I'm relieved that he died,” Yuma threw out with a defiant look at Natsume.

Keiko was alarmed by her son's words. Why go out of his way to say that?

“Thank you, sorry for my rudeness.”

Staring at the door Natsume had shut, Keiko hesitated for a moment. Then she put on her shoes and flew out of the apartment. She called out to stop Natsume, who was standing in front of the elevator.

“Please don't make too much of what Yuma just said,” she tried to justify her son's behavior to the detective. “He might not have liked Hideaki much, but my son is definitely not the kind of child who would do such a thing.”

“He was at least half serious, though. I already knew they didn't have a good relationship. One of his friends said that Yuma grew to hate Hideaki for getting violent with both of you.”

Keiko winced. So he hadn't just made inquiries at the hospital but also gone to Yuma's school.

“But I don't think hatred necessarily leads to murderous intent, either.”

Natsume bobbed his head and got onto the elevator that had arrived.

Inspecting the apartment's restored white walls, Keiko asked the accompanying real estate agent: “How much is the rent?”

“Including the admin fee, it's 108,000 yen.”

That was more than double their previous apartment's rate, but a two-bedroom property in Ikebukuro no doubt cost that much even if it wasn't very spacious.

When she asked, “Yu, how do you like it,” he assented with a silent nod.

He had to be tired from visiting properties since the morning. Despite her son's lukewarm response, Keiko took a liking to the apartment. It wasn't too far from Yuma's school, and with two rooms, he'd have his own study.

She was far over her planned budget but resigned herself to working harder at her job.

“I'll sign the contract,” she told the agent, and indulged herself with glances around the interior. Picturing the life that she could start with Yuma here, she felt thrilled for the first time in a while.

After they returned to the real estate company to pay the deposit, she and Yuma walked back to the condominium.

She realized that it had been a while since she'd spent time with Yuma. He walked a pace ahead of her in silence. Her son no longer initiated conversations with her, and Keiko, herself, had no idea how to these days. Yuma had been a talkative kid once. As soon as Keiko came home from work, he'd go on about whatever had happened at school like he couldn't wait.

After Hideaki joined them, Yuma became a different person. She'd hurt him badly enough that he was now a different person. Slowly, though, she was going to mend their relationship. They were moving into a new apartment and starting a new life,
redoing this one step at a time.

She stopped in front of the supermarket.

“Yu—” she called out, to which her son slowly turned around. “What do you want to have for dinner today?”

Yuma thought for a while. “A rice omelet, I guess?”

The hint of sorrow in her son's eyes gave her pause.

Although she wanted to eat with Yuma, Keiko had a late shift again that night. Once she made and wrapped the rice omelet, she went to work.

It was almost nine o'clock, according to her watch. There had been no emergency cases that day, and peace reigned in the nurse station. Just when she thought it would be nice if it stayed that way until the end of her shift, Natsume strode in.

The expression on his face filled her with dread.

“I would prefer you didn't come to my workplace. If you need to speak with me, come to my house,” she requested firmly, glancing at her coworkers.

“I'm very sorry, but there was no time for that … Yuma came to the police this evening.”

“To the police?”

“He confessed to setting the apartment on fire,” whispered Natsume.

She couldn't process what he was saying. What a bad joke. But Natsume's earnest gaze dispelled that possibility.

What in the world was going on—

“Is there somewhere we can speak?” Natsume insisted, and they headed to the lobby.

“What's going on?!” she demanded.

“Please calm down,” the detective tried to appease her. No one was in the lobby at the moment, but he was still speaking in a near whisper.

“Around six o'clock tonight, Yuma came to our police station.
He said he wanted to tell me something. When I listened to him in a room, he said he had lit the apartment on fire.”

“There's no way that could have happened.”

Why would Yuma say such a thing? She couldn't make any sense of it.

“There is nothing to contradict his confession right now. It's been verified that he did drop by a gas station at around 10:00 p.m. that day, but the staffer also testified that Yuma had come and filled his whole tank up the day before as well.”

Keiko's heart started to hammer when she heard this. The previous day too?

“Riding his scooter enough to use up a full tank in a day is hard to imagine, and I found it strange. He turned himself in as I was wondering about that. Apparently, that night, Hideaki came home just as Yuma was about to have dinner. They got into an argument, and your son was struck in the head several times. He rushed out of the house. The episode seems to have honed the hatred he'd felt toward Hideaki into a murderous impulse. Using the refueling pump on the veranda, he transferred the gasoline from his scooter into plastic bottles, went back to the gas station to refuel, and bided his time, riding his scooter around again, until Hideaki went to bed …”

“But … Yuma really said that?” she asked in disbelief.

Natsume nodded. “Would you come with me to the station? I'll be waiting in the parking lot.” He gently placed his hand on Keiko's shoulder, then left.

It was unbelievable—

Why would Yuma make such a confession? He certainly wasn't the culprit.

The only possibility that came to mind was that he was protecting her. Keiko felt a tight pain in her chest at the conclusion.

Was Yuma actually trying to take the fall for a mother like herself?

Even standing up was a challenge, but Keiko hurried to Room 312.

“What's wrong?” Yasuoka asked, beside himself, sensing a crisis from Keiko's expression alone.

“Apparently Yuma confessed to the police.”

“What?!” let out Yasuoka, stunned.

Keiko couldn't stop her body from shaking. The more she thought about Yuma, the worse her shaking became.

“Why would he …”

“To protect me. I can't think of any other reason.”

Yasuoka turned a pained look at her.

“Sorry … I can't do this anymore …”

Yasuoka covered his eyes, taking her meaning, but immediately lifted his face and nodded. “I understand. You don't need to worry about me. I'll always be waiting for you.”

His smile skewered her heart. Consumed by guilt, she couldn't bear to look at him. She had used a good man like Yasuoka.

She said sorry one more time and rushed out of the room.

Using the emergency stairs right by it, she scrambled down to the first floor. The stairs connected to the outside and were a shortcut to the parking lot.

Natsume, who was standing by the car, noticed and looked at her.

“There's something I want to talk to you about,” Keiko announced as she faced him.

During her whole time in the passenger seat as they headed to the police station, Natsume remained silent.

Anticipating the questions he would be asking her soon, Keiko turned over in her head the answers she might give him.

She was prepared for grim days to come. Even so, she wanted some inkling of hope for her life ahead to persist …

After he saw the bruise Hideaki had left on her, Yasuoka became her sounding board.
She should leave a man like that
. Keiko was vaguely aware that Yasuoka felt affection towards her. Then, one day, he proposed to her, asking her to marry him after his discharge. He would then devote his remaining life to taking good care of Keiko and Yuma.

If I can be with you, I'll do anything
—Yasuoka's words made something pop in Keiko.

His offer could be her last chance at happiness.

She told him it would be difficult for her to ditch Hideaki, among other things. That if she suddenly talked about breaking up, she didn't know what he would do to her. Then, when she casually told him that if only Hideaki would die, they could be together, Yasuoka repeated his vow with a blank expression: “I'll do anything to be with you.”

With that confirmation, Keiko made up her mind.

There had been a string of arson cases in her neighborhood lately. She could use that, she suggested to Yasuoka. The hardest part was the alibi, but he promised to provide one for her.

That day, right before midnight, Yasuoka made a nurse call to Keiko indicating that he was feeling ill. After bringing an IV drip into the room, she quickly changed into regular clothes that she had stored in the locker.

“I'm okay here,” Yasuoka told her, and she exited through the emergency stairs directly outside of the room. Then she ran home. At a run, it didn't take more than five minutes from the hospital to her apartment.

Once she was finally there, she headed to the side with the veranda. The light in the room was off. Plastic bottles she'd filled with gasoline were on the veranda. She'd taken it from Yuma's scooter in the morning while he was asleep. She splashed the fuel on bundles of paper and the outside wall of the apartment. Peeping in through a gap in the curtains, she ascertained that the
figure wrapped in blankets was fast asleep.

Then, with a shaking hand, she lit the match.

How had she been able to do that? Just remembering the sensation of lighting the match made her tremble at her own cold-bloodedness.

She'd just wanted to become happy. To escape from such a life.

Keiko looked at her fingertips. They were shaking slightly.

“You slipped Hideaki the sleeping medication that we detected in him, didn't you?” Natsume, sitting across from her, said. In the back, there was another desk where another detective was writing something on paper.

Keiko nodded.

She'd wanted him to be sound asleep and to die without too much suffering, at least.

“Weren't you afraid that Yuma would be home?”

“He hated being alone with that man and went out whenever he was there. Just as you said, I thought he wouldn't come home until I did.”

Natsume, who had been staring at Keiko, nodded slightly.

“Detective, did you guess from the outset that our fire wasn't part of the spree?”

“I wasn't confident. But it seemed out of place because the fires up until then had been in places like parking lots and garbage dumps where no one would be placed in direct danger. So I investigated the victim, and indeed there seemed to be issues with Hideaki's behavior. You had an alibi that you were working at the hospital, and when I heard that during the time of the fire you were in Mr. Yasuoka's room, I went to visit him.”

“I bet he was such a bad liar, you started to think I might be the culprit.”

“He wasn't such a bad liar, actually. But when I asked if you
were always the one who put in his IV drip, he answered that he asked for you when you were available because you were good at it. When I took a glance at his needle marks, there were several that were obviously far from his veins. Beyond being good or bad, I thought it wasn't the work of a nurse. He was desperate—about covering for you.”

There was the sound of a knock and a detective came into the interrogation room. He whispered into Natsume's ear. Natsume breathed a small sigh and returned his gaze to her.

“Another detective has been questioning Mr. Yasuoka, and your stories appear to be consistent.”

“It was something I asked him to do unreasonably, and he pitied Yuma and me. Please, he should receive as light of a punishment as possible.”

“Whatever the case, imprisoning Mr. Yasuoka might be difficult.” A cold sensation ran down Keiko's back as Natsume's gaze sharpened. “He hasn't been informed, but he has terminal cancer and his remaining days are numbered. You, knowing that, just used Mr. Yasuoka.”