Chapter 84: Kimura
Suzuki Koji stroked his chin, lost in thought for what felt like an eternity. A heavy silence descended upon the small clinic, broken only by the rhythmic, almost judgmental tick-tock of the clock on the wall.
Kishida Masayoshi was beginning to feel a familiar, anxious impatience. Normally, he was a patient man, but this particular question, the authenticity of the diary, felt so monumentally important that he was desperate for an answer. Yet, he didn’t dare interrupt Suzuki’s deep contemplation. What if he broke his friend’s train of thought, and the crucial insight was lost forever? The risk was too great.
“Why don’t we,” Suzuki Koji said suddenly, his voice cutting through the silence, “try looking at this from a different angle?”
“I’ve just been thinking. If our goal is to definitively prove whether this diary is real or not, then no amount of analysis, however meticulous, will ever give us a conclusive answer.” He paused, then explained, “Think about it. As long as a seed of doubt exists, even if Kagehara Tetsuya himself were to confess that this was his diary, we couldn’t use that as definitive proof in any official capacity, could we?”
Kishida was taken aback for a moment, about to retort, but then he realized Suzuki was right. It was like trying to prove that ghosts don’t exist. You can’t prove a negative.
“So, what do you mean by ‘a different angle’? How should we be thinking about this?”
Suzuki Koji replied, “From the angle of falsification. No, to be more precise, from the angle of forgery.”
“Falsification? Forgery?” Kishida’s expression turned thoughtful.
“A thought just occurred to me,” Suzuki continued, a new, almost academic, excitement in his voice. “What if the two of us were to try and forge a Kagehara Tetsuya diary entry? Could we succeed?”
“Let’s take a simple example. Let’s say we wanted to forge a diary entry from Kagehara Tetsuya with the specific objective of ‘confessing to a crime.’ To send a message to the police that Kagehara has indeed killed someone, just not Tanaka Erika.”
“This is, of course, just a hypothesis.”
Kishida Masayoshi nodded slowly. “That’s actually a very interesting approach. So, who would be the target in this scenario? Or rather, who would be the victim in our fabricated ‘confession’?”
“How about Yamazaki Yuki? The Makeup Hunter’s eighth victim. Sixteen years old, a second-year student at Aomori High School at the time of her death.”
“The girl who was into literature?” Kishida nodded, accessing his mental case file. “Yamazaki Yuki was quite petite, about 153cm tall. A member of the Aomori High literature club. I heard she was a very talented writer, that she had aspirations of becoming a novelist and was working hard towards that goal.”
Suzuki Koji nodded. “Well, let’s set the victim aside for a moment. To successfully forge a diary entry from Kagehara Tetsuya, one would have to know him very, very well. And that, of course, would have to include the knowledge that he is a clinical psychopath.”
“After discovering that crucial piece of information, we would realize that, besides the real-world facts and events, the greatest difficulty would lie in accurately mimicking the thought processes of a psychopath, and then transcribing them into a believable written narrative.”
Kishida couldn’t help but object. “So, you’re just assuming that as a given? It’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? That premise feels a little… flimsy. If you hadn’t told me about it, I wouldn’t have known what a psychopath was, let alone any other strange mental illnesses. A normal person would never even think to investigate that. They would just assume Kagehara Tetsuya was a normal, if troubled, person.”
“Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that our forger, during their own investigation, discovered that Kagehara Tetsuya was a psychopath, and realized that to forge his diary, they would have to mimic that particular mindset,” Suzuki Koji said with a shrug.
“I still find it hard to get into that headspace. Let’s try a different target, then. What if we were to try and forge a diary from Hasebe Koichi? If we could pin the murder of Ōshima Masaki on Hasebe, that would be a great help, wouldn’t it?”
“Eh?” Hearing this, a strange, prickling sensation ran down Kishida’s spine. “Pin the death of Ōshima Masaki… on Hasebe Koichi?”
“Hm? What’s wrong? Based on the situation you described to me, isn’t that a perfectly conventional line of thought for a criminal trying to deflect suspicion?”
“To pin Ōshima Masaki’s death on Hasebe Koichi… using a diary…” Kishida gestured for Suzuki to be quiet, and then began to mutter the phrase over and over, like a mantra.
He started to pace back and forth in the small office, a frantic energy in his movements, as if something in the depths of his mind was trying to claw its way to the surface.
“What is it? What is it?”
“Ōgami Yōsuke’s theory from the other day? No, that’s not it.”
“To shift all the suspicion onto a dead man?”
“No, no… damn it, what is it?”
“Where’s the problem? Hasebe Koichi? No. Ōshima Masaki? No.”
“Shift the blame… diary… shift the blame… diary…”
Suzuki watched him, a look of profound exasperation on his face, but he managed to hold his tongue. After nearly two full minutes of this frantic pacing, Kishida, still unable to grasp the elusive thought, finally gave up. He slumped back into his chair, took out his notebook, and wrote down the phrase, circling the words ‘shift the blame’ and ‘diary’. “Never mind. I’ll think about it later. Right, where were we?”
“We were on the premise,” Suzuki said, with a long-suffering sigh. “In any case, the forger of the diary on this computer clearly knew that Kagehara Tetsuya was a psychopath. So, for now, let’s just accept that as a given.”
“And then?”
“And then, of course, we would have to fabricate a motive for Kagehara Tetsuya to ‘murder’ Yamazaki Yuki.”
“Mm… continue.”
“Secondly, we would have to, based on information like Yamazaki Yuki’s time of death, fabricate a ‘murder process’ for Kagehara. The clues, or rather, the flow of the murder, would have to not conflict with the information the police already have, and it would have to be perfectly, chillingly, logical.”
Kishida shook his head. “If I weren't a cop, I couldn't possibly pull that off. There's a lot of information that hasn't been released to the public, stuff only we in the police know. So unless we were the ones who killed Yamazaki Yuki, or we have superpowers, it's impossible.”
Suzuki shrugged, pointing at the screen. “So, isn't the conclusion obvious? The only person who could have forged this diary is the Makeup Hunter himself. Or... the diary is real. Of course, that's assuming the details of the actual crime, as described later, don't drastically conflict with reality.”
Kishida was about to say something, but his phone suddenly rang with a sharp, insistent buzz. It was the section chief from the precinct.
The chief's voice was deadly serious, devoid of any preamble. "Kishida, where are you? Get to the station right now. Something important has come up."
"A new case?" Kishida froze for a second.
He had a meeting scheduled with Yomikawa Tsuko. If something came up and he had to cancel, it would be a disaster. If he stood that girl up, he knew with absolute certainty that his chances of getting his hands on the next, most crucial, part of the diary would drop to zero.
"It is a new case, yes," the chief's voice crackled over the line. "And a very difficult one."
In that instant, Kishida’s mind instantly leaped to the darkest possibility: the Makeup Hunter. Had he struck again?
"You know the name Kimura, right?" the chief continued, his voice grim. "The male student from Suzaku High who went missing a few days ago. We haven't been officially involved because his death hadn't been confirmed."
"But word just came in. Kimura's body... it's been found on Mie Island."
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