Chapter 16: The Final Cleanup
Investigation Headquarters
"Senpai, the transcripts are all sorted. Can we let the clerk go now?" Matsushita Makoto handed the organized notes to Kishida Masayoshi. "As for the part about Kagehara Tetsuya, I’ll summarize it directly."
"Go ahead."
"At 9:30 PM, after the ghost story gathering ended, ĹŚgami YĹŤsuke and Kagehara Tetsuya went to the restroom together. The clerk isn’t sure how long they stayed in there, but it was far longer than a normal bathroom break."
"After that, Kagehara Tetsuya likely went to see Yomikawa Tsuko and slipped a note under her door."
"Around 10:30 PM, the clerk at the front desk saw Kagehara Tetsuya, still wearing his mask, return to his room from the second floor. He then changed clothes and left the inn."
"At around 11:00 PM, Kagehara Tetsuya came back from outside and had a conversation with the clerk. The content of their talk seemed targeted, as if he was deliberately fishing for information."
"After that, Kagehara Tetsuya returned to his room and completely vanished."
Kishida Masayoshi listened, his brow deeply furrowed.
Matsushita Makoto continued her analysis, "Senpai, I can’t shake the feeling that Yomikawa Tsuko is highly suspicious. According to her statement, she entered Kagehara Tetsuya’s room around 10:00 PM and accidentally fell asleep. But at 10:30 PM, Kagehara Tetsuya returned to his room and even changed clothes. How could Yomikawa Tsuko not have noticed any of that?"
"Not to mention, at 11:00 PM, Kagehara Tetsuya came back to the inn and mysteriously disappeared from his room. No matter how you look at it, Yomikawa Tsuko is involved."
Kishida Masayoshi thought for a moment and said, "But even if Yomikawa Tsuko is lying, it doesn’t prove she has a direct connection to the murder. It just means she might have a special relationship with Kagehara Tetsuya."
"Ah!" Matsushita Makoto suddenly slammed the table. "I just remembered! When I was questioning Yomikawa, it occurred to me that there’s definitely something ambiguous between her and Kagehara Tetsuya. Maybe she has feelings for him but got rejected."
Kishida Masayoshi sighed. He knew Matsushita Makoto’s romantic instincts were kicking in, though this time she might be onto something. "Let’s talk about the victim and Hasebe Koichi."
"Alright. The information we have so far comes from the investigation headquarters’ files, but it’s not very detailed. The rest will require field investigations and interviews."
Matsushita Makoto finished speaking and began reading directly from the report: "The victim, ĹŚshima Masaki, male, 34 years old, dropped out of high school. The reason for his dropout is still unknown. Currently unemployed, he has been detained twelve times—five times for street racing, three times for shoplifting at convenience stores, and the remaining four times for fighting."
"ĹŚshima Masaki also has a younger sister named ĹŚshima Mana, who currently works as an accountant at a local company. She bailed him out three times but stopped after that. We’ll need to contact ĹŚshima Mana tomorrow."
"However, what’s strange is that the inn clerk didn’t see ĹŚshima Masaki enter the inn. The clerk was on duty from 5:00 PM, and the only time he left was between 9:50 and 10:05 PM to eat. We reviewed the surveillance footage at high speed, and the clerk wasn’t lying—he was indeed at the front desk the whole time."
"So, ĹŚshima Masaki must have entered the inn before 5:00 PM and possibly stayed in room 216 the entire time," Kishida Masayoshi noted, jotting this down in his investigation notebook.
The forensic examiner had narrowed down ĹŚshima Masaki’s time of death to between 9:15 and 9:45 PM, which ruled out the possibility that he had entered the inn while the clerk was eating.
"Now, tell me about Hasebe Koichi’s situation."
"Right. This Hasebe Koichi is scum of the scum," Matsushita Makoto said, flipping to the next page of the report. "Hasebe Koichi, male, 35 years old, was the main perpetrator in a bullying-related death case seventeen years ago. Even before that, he was a notorious delinquent—fighting, stealing, and robbing classmates repeatedly without remorse. He was sentenced to twelve years for the bullying case, which happened during his third year of high school."
"After being released from prison, Hasebe Koichi has been detained several times for street racing. Records show he was once arrested for racing with ĹŚshima Masaki, so they must have known each other. I think we should investigate their relationship. Hasebe Koichi is definitely a major suspect."
Kishida Masayoshi thought for a moment and said, "Here’s what we’ll do. Send me the contact information for Hasebe Koichi’s family and ĹŚshima Mana. I’ll handle the field investigations tomorrow. You focus on the biker gangs that Hasebe Koichi and ĹŚshima Masaki used to race with. See if ĹŚshima Masaki had any conflicts with anyone."
Matsushita Makoto nodded, sent the information, and then asked, "What about Kagehara Tetsuya? He doesn’t have any relatives left, does he? How should we investigate his situation? Maybe I should go ask Yomikawa Tsuko again. She definitely knows something."
"Kagehara Tetsuya... I’ll handle that. It’s getting late, so you should head home and rest." Kishida Masayoshi added a note to his investigation notebook, then suddenly looked up. "By the way, what was the name of the victim in Hasebe Koichi’s bullying case?"
Matsushita Makoto, who had been organizing her belongings, set them down and replied with a heavy expression, "The girl’s name was Onizuka Sayaka."
......
"A hammer, a saw, a drill, a sharp knife... these should be enough."
Kagehara Tetsuya gathered the tools he needed from the villa, then carried the head down to the basement. He laid out garbage bags as a protective layer, steadied the head, and slowly brought the knife to it.
*Scratch, scratch...*
*Creak, creak...*
*Thud, thud...*
*Clatter, clatter...*
The basement began to echo with spine-chilling sounds—some like the tip of a knife scraping against something hard, others like a saw blade slipping. After a few moments of the drill’s whirring and the hammer’s pounding, the noise finally subsided.
About ten minutes later, Kagehara Tetsuya emerged from the basement. He carried a bag of fragmented items into the garage, where there was gasoline.
He poured gasoline over the remains and set them ablaze, tossing the now-dirty rubber gloves into the fire as well before putting on a fresh pair.
By the time the flames died down, the pile of fragments had completely carbonized. Kagehara Tetsuya picked out the bones from the ashes. He hadn’t intended to burn the bones to ash, so the remaining charred fragments were crushed and flushed down the toilet.
The leftover bones couldn’t be disposed of carelessly either. If the police got their hands on them, they could still reconstruct the face. Therefore, Kagehara Tetsuya decided not to throw them away. He would hide them for now and, once the heat died down, buy some plaster powder to seal them completely.
What shape should he make them into? A sphere would be hard to store, a cube too ordinary, but a cone might work.
After wrapping the knife used as the murder weapon and the bones in a bundle, he hid them in a corner of the basement storage room. Then he opened the garage’s roll-up door. It was 4:30 AM, and in half an hour, some neighbors might start waking up. Fortunately, it was windy today, so half an hour should be enough to disperse the smell.
Next, he cleaned the tools he had used, took a shower on the second floor, made himself breakfast, and then contacted a locksmith to arrange for the locks to be changed.
After hanging up the phone, he stretched his neck and smiled with relief. "This way, everything should be fine."
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