Chapter 79: Second Diary Analysis (Part 4)
“Well? What do you think of the May 2nd entry?” Kishida Masayoshi asked, leaning forward with a barely concealed eagerness as Suzuki Koji finished reading. There was a subtle, almost hopeful, glint in his eyes; it was clear he had already formed his own theories.
Suzuki Koji crossed his arms, his brow furrowed in deep thought. “Hmm… how to put this,” he began slowly. “I have a strange feeling about this entry.”
“What kind of feeling?”
Suzuki tapped a thoughtful finger against his arm, choosing his words with a clinical precision. “Predictability. That’s the closest word. As I was reading this entry, I felt as if I could almost… predict… what the next sentence would be. Of course, I’m not saying I could fully anticipate Kagehara Tetsuya’s thoughts, but… certain parts of it just felt so… logical. So… constructed.”
“Especially this part here,” he said, pointing to the screen, “where Kagehara Tetsuya is considering the possibility of Tanaka Erika resisting, of her fingernails leaving behind his DNA…”
A slow, knowing smile spread across Kishida Masayoshi’s face. “It’s… tedious, isn’t it?”
“Tedious?” Suzuki blinked, then a look of sudden, dawning comprehension crossed his face. He snapped his fingers. “Yes! That’s it exactly! Tedious! Kagehara Tetsuya’s writing in this entry is so incredibly, almost unnaturally detailed. He’s included so many things that seem completely unnecessary, things that a normal person would never bother to write down. It’s almost… it’s almost as if this diary was written specifically for someone else to read.”
“To say it was written for someone else… that’s a conclusion we can’t jump to just yet,” Kishida said, though he had spent the better part of the previous night wrestling with that very same, unsettling thought. “My own feeling is that these are the kinds of thoughts one would have, yes, but they would remain in the mind. They wouldn’t be written down in such a meticulous, step-by-step fashion. To write down the entire thought process so clearly… do you think it could be a symptom of his condition?”
“I think not. In all the clinical literature on psychopathy, I’ve never encountered a case where the subject documents their thought processes with such… exhaustive detail.” Suzuki Koji shook his head. “This is a plan he is formulating for his own use, not a proposal he is writing for someone else. In short, to be blunt, there is something very, very strange about this diary entry.”
Hearing this, Kishida Masayoshi’s lips tightened into a thin, grim line. Kagehara Tetsuya had vanished without a trace. The chances of ever capturing him, he knew, were slim to none. Which meant that this diary was likely the only thing that could ever shed light on the role Kagehara Tetsuya had played in the Tanaka Erika case a year ago. And if it was a fake… Kishida felt a profound, almost unbearable sense of disappointment.
Just then, Suzuki Koji suddenly asked, “By the way, Kagehara Tetsuya mentions planning to use a stun gun in his crime. Were there any marks on Tanaka Erika’s body consistent with that?” He paused, then added, “It was summer, wasn’t it? Her clothing would have been thin. If a stun gun had been used, it should have left a mark.”
“If the voltage was high enough to cause instantaneous unconsciousness, then yes, it would have left a mark,” Kishida confirmed. “But the medical examiner was extremely thorough with all the Makeup Hunter’s victims. And on Tanaka Erika’s body, there were absolutely no signs of her having been subjected to an electric shock prior to her death.”
“And it wasn’t just an electric shock. There were no traces of any other chemical agents that could have induced unconsciousness either. And yet, Tanaka Erika showed no signs of resistance whatsoever. It was almost as if… as if she had calmly, willingly, accepted her own death.”
Suzuki was stunned. “That’s… that’s truly bizarre. How could he have possibly managed to strangle his victim without them putting up a fight? Even if a person is asleep, if they suddenly start to suffocate, they will immediately wake up and struggle, won’t they?”
“And that,” Kishida Masayoshi said with a weary sigh, “is why our official police theory is that he used a physical, rather than chemical or electrical, method.” He nodded slowly. “The theory is that he first gained the victim’s trust, and then used a physical technique to induce a rapid loss of consciousness. For example, under the pretext of ‘seeking a thrill,’ of experiencing something like shock or fainting, he could have…”
Suzuki Koji shook his head, a look of profound disinterest on his face. “No, no, that’s all too technical for me. I have absolutely no interest in the practicalities. Let’s get back to the diary.”
Kishida Masayoshi nodded, then pointed to the very last sentence of the entry.
“This part here… it says he can barely endure it anymore, that he’s been planning it every day. It’s talking about the urge to kill, right? A psychopath… do they really have that kind of spontaneous ‘urge to kill’?”
“Theoretically speaking, that particular impulse has nothing to do with psychopathy itself,” Suzuki said, first giving his conclusion, then his assessment. “If the tedious, almost constructed detail is this diary's greatest flaw, then this line here… this is its most authentic moment.”
“Authentic?” Kishida felt a sense of absurdity. “You’re calling the inability to resist the urge to kill… authentic?”
Suzuki nodded gravely. “For a normal person, it's a monstrous impulse. But for a psychopath, it is a perfectly ordinary, and very real, feeling of anticipation.”
“A normal person may not have the urge to kill, but they have other urges. Let me give you a simple example. A new hit drama is premiering tomorrow. Are you looking forward to it? Do you want to watch it?”
Kishida stared at him blankly. “I’m not looking forward to it.”
“A sold-out concert for your favorite band?”
“Just get to the point, Koji.”
Suzuki sighed. “The point is, everyone experiences anticipation and impulse. And note, this is not a purely abstract emotion. It is the imagining of a ‘good thing’ that is about to happen.”
“For Kagehara Tetsuya, the act of killing is no different from watching a movie or going to a concert. It’s an event. Something to look forward to. So, the thought that ‘tomorrow, I will finally get to kill Tanaka Erika’ is, for him, exactly the same as a fan's eager anticipation for a sold-out concert tomorrow night.”
“Therefore, for this kind of psychological anticipation, this urge to kill, to appear in him is perfectly natural. It would be stranger if it didn’t appear. I can say, with one hundred percent certainty, that this sentence in the diary is absolutely authentic.”
Kishida Masayoshi nodded thoughtfully, beginning, for the first time, to truly, on some small level, understand the alien world of the psychopathic mind.
“Remember what I told you before?” Suzuki continued. “Once Kagehara Tetsuya starts killing, starts committing crimes, the harm he will cause will be no less than that of the Makeup Hunter.”
“Besides the urge to kill that we just discussed, the act of killing itself is something that can become… addictive. For anyone.”
“The ‘addiction’ here doesn't just refer to the act of violence itself, but to the habit of ‘using murder as a means to solve problems.’ That is what becomes addictive.”
“From this sentence, it’s clear that Kagehara Tetsuya is already very, very close to this ‘addiction.’ He has already realized that murder is a very quick and efficient means of solving a problem. He is just… on the verge of it, waiting to try it, to succeed, for the first time.”
“Addiction to murder… the urge to kill…” For some reason, Kishida Masayoshi’s mind suddenly flashed to Hasebe Koichi and Ōshima Masaki. The short interval between those two cases… was it because Kagehara Tetsuya had become ‘addicted’ to killing?
But looking at what had happened afterwards, he hadn’t solved any problems. On the contrary, he had created a mountain of them, so many that he had been forced to… disappear.
“A criminal genius…”
Recalling Suzuki’s earlier assessment, a new, and deeply unsettling, thought suddenly exploded in Kishida’s mind.
Is it possible… that Kagehara Tetsuya wasn’t the one who killed Ōshima Masaki and Hasebe Koichi at all?
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