Taking a taxi straight to a high-rise apartment building in Minato Ward, it was only natural for a popular idol singer to live in a high-security luxury complex.
After showing his police ID, Ritsu was finally allowed through the security office on the ground floor and took the elevator up to the 25th floor, where Yoko lived.
As he was about to ask Megure for the exact apartment number, he noticed members of the forensics division in dark blue uniforms had already begun their investigation. Walking toward them, Ritsu pushed open the door and was immediately hit by a wave of hot air.
Before he could even get a clear look at the room, his glasses fogged over with a layer of white mist.
Removing his glasses and wiping them with a handkerchief, Ritsu looked inside. The first thing he saw was the body of a man lying on his back on the floor with a kitchen knife stabbed straight through him.
If Yoko had been the one to open the door, the visual impact would have been pretty horrifying.
Rather than examining the corpse immediately, Ritsu first looked up at the grim-faced Megure, the softly sobbing Yoko, and an unfamiliar man he had never seen before.
"Oh, Inspector Onizawa, you're here. Sorry to drag you all the way out here in the middle of the night," Megure said with an awkward grin.
"It's no problem. I happened to still be awake anyway." Ritsu smiled as he chewed coffee-flavored gum. Since he had drunk a cocktail earlier, traces of alcohol likely still lingered in his breath even if there was no smell on his clothes. He asked, "Has the coroner not arrived yet?"
Megure shook his head and explained, "It doesn't look like poisoning, so we didn't call anyone in for overtime. Besides, Inspector Onizawa, if I remember correctly, when you worked overseas you weren't just a criminal consultant, you were also a pretty skilled forensic examiner, right?"
'So the main reason they called him over was because they saw him as multi-purpose? Someone who could both investigate crimes and fill in as a coroner?'
Ritsu maintained his harmless smile and silently accepted Megure's assumption. Looking at Yoko, he asked, "Okino-san, may I ask you something?"
Wiping away the tears at the corners of her eyes, Yoko nodded. "Of course."
"Do you usually leave the air conditioning on even when you're not home? And it's set very high. Are you especially sensitive to the cold?"
Hearing Ritsu's question, Yoko shook her head and explained, "No. I normally turn the air conditioning off before leaving the house. And even if I use the heater, I wouldn't set it this high."
That made things strange.
The room temperature was extremely high. The moment he entered, he could directly feel the hot air blowing from the central heating system. The temperature difference between indoors and outdoors had even fogged up his glasses.
Ritsu walked over to the central air control panel and discovered the room temperature displayed as 27 degrees Celsius, while the heater itself had been set to 31 degrees… the maximum setting, just as he suspected.
Without questioning either suspect, Ritsu began conducting a preliminary examination of the body first. Pulling on a pair of white gloves from his coat pocket, he examined the fatal wound. Driving a kitchen knife completely through someone's body was not something an average person could accomplish. Yoko was probably not the killer.
The stab wound in the upper abdomen had pierced the spleen directly, causing it to rupture and resulting in massive internal bleeding. That would have been enough to kill the victim in a very short time. There were no restraint marks on the limbs, nor any signs of struggle on the body itself, which suggested the killer was someone the victim knew. Most people would never expose their back to a stranger.
Surveying the room, he noted that the entryway opened directly into the living room, merging the two into one space. The entire apartment was in complete disarray, yet strangely there were no signs of a struggle. What struck him as especially odd was the dining chair sitting perfectly upright beside the body.
"Hm?"
Ritsu suddenly noticed something unusual about the blood that had seeped into the floorboards. It had clearly been diluted with water. More importantly, there were damp patches around the corpse.
The central heating running at maximum temperature for a long period of time, diluted blood, traces of moisture around the body, and the neatly positioned dining chair in an otherwise chaotic room.
Combining those four points, Ritsu had already reconstructed the entire sequence of the "killer's" actions. He forcefully dragged aside the corpse, which had already entered the early stages of rigor mortis. This corpse seriously needed to lose some weight.
The moment he saw the dent in the floor that had been hidden beneath the body, Ritsu became completely certain his deduction was correct. He stood up, ready to close the case, only for a forensic officer examining the scene to pick up an earring and say,
"Inspector Megure, I found a woman's earring underneath the sofa!"
After recognizing the design of the earring, Yoko exclaimed in surprise, "That earring… I've seen it before."
"Really? Okino-san, please think carefully. It might be connected to the killer."
"It might belong to Yuko-san. She wears this kind of design all the time." Yoko pointed to her own ears, which weren't pierced. "Since my ears aren't pierced, I know for certain it isn't mine."
"And who is Yuko?"
"She debuted around the same time I did. Ikegami Yuko is a—"
Before Yoko could finish speaking, the unfamiliar man who had remained silent until now suddenly interjected.
"Now that you mention it, ever since Yoko replaced Yuko-san as the lead actress in that TV drama, she's held a grudge against her."
It was an obvious attempt to steer the conversation and redirect the police's attention elsewhere. It seemed this unfamiliar man had mistaken Yoko for the killer.
Still, illegally entering someone else's residence was against the law, so Ritsu did not stop Megure from summoning the not-actually-a-killer suspect to the crime scene.
Megure turned to Onizawa Takashi and asked, "What do you think, Inspector Onizawa?"
"Me? Since she's a criminal suspect, naturally she should be brought here." Ritsu looked toward the unfamiliar man and asked, "What is your relationship with Okino-san? I have a question for you."
"Hello, Inspector. I'm Yoko's manager, Eiichi Yamagishi. Here's my business card." Eiichi had quietly marveled at Ritsu's handsome appearance the moment he saw him. If only someone with looks like that could become one of his talents.
Of course, that was something he only dared think privately. He didn't believe he had the ability to persuade this young inspector, who clearly handled cases with remarkable efficiency, to abandon such a promising career for the entertainment industry.
And besides, he was worried. Deeply worried that Ritsu might see through the truth of the case. His hand drifted toward his pants pocket, where he still hid the "crucial evidence" he had taken from the victim's hand: a strand of brown hair.
"Yamagishi-san, do you happen to have a spare key to this apartment?"
Eiichi nodded, then shook his head, explaining, "I used to have a spare key to this apartment, but it went missing not long ago. Otherwise, Yoko wouldn't have been the one opening the door earlier."
The missing spare key. The earring under the sofa.
Ritsu slightly raised an eyebrow. He had more or less pieced together the full sequence of events surrounding the case and couldn't help feeling a trace of contempt toward the corpse lying in the pool of blood.
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