Chapter 12: The First Decapitation (Part 4)
On the way to Kanami-san's room, we passed by Yayoi-san. I meant to greet her, but there was something unapproachable about her, and I missed my chance. She continued walking in the opposite direction. We had passed right by each other, but it was like she hadn't even noticed our existence.
"I wonder what she's up to," Kunagisa said. "Something seems a little strange about her."
"She looked kind of worried about something. Or maybe just in deep thought."
"Hmph. Maybe she was looking around Kanami-chan's room, y'know? Maybe she had the same idea as us. Solve the case quickly so we can all go home."
"Hmm, I wonder. She's been here the longest, right? I doubt she'd suddenly want to just pack up and leave."
"Eh, maybe. But personally, I hate islands where murders take place."
"I really wonder about that."
Just before we all scattered from the dining room, Iria-san had laid down a rule. "Until Aikawa-san gets here in six days, nobody leaves the island. We're all suspects here, myself included."
In other words, Akane-san wasn't the only one being imprisoned. And it wasn't just curiosity motivating Kunagisa to dig deeper. She wanted to go home as planned. As lazy as she was, she was strangely anal about plans.
"Well, either way, it's good. I certainly wouldn't mind if Yayoi-chan solved this case for us."
"I don't think that's what she's up to. She had a sort of melancholy, somber vibe about her. I can't help but wonder if she was disposing of evidence or something."
"That would certainly suck a lot for us," Kunagisa said, eyeing me through the digital camera. "Let's hurry up and check it out."
Kanami-san's door had been left open. You could see the inside of the outward-opening door. Nobody seemed to be around. I wondered what everyone else was doing, except Akane-san, who was presumably in the storage room. But I decided to set that thought aside for the time being. People will do as they please, insofar as they're allowed. That was true on this island, and it was true anywhere else.
The room smelled like paint thinner as usual, but the paint seemed to mostly be dry by now. Kanami-san's body remained in the same place it had been this morning and looked otherwise exactly the same.
"So let's check it out…"
There's something terribly… Comical about a headless body. What makes dead bodies so creepy and terrifying is that emotionless expression on the face, but with no head to display that face, the creepiness and terror is replaced with hilarity. It's like looking at a screwed-up attempt at a plastic model or something.
The marble river. Kunagisa's tossed coat remained right in the middle.
"By the way, about that coat. How much was it?"
"It was part of a two-piece set for about twenty thousand, I think."
"Dollars?"
"Nah, yen."
Wow, an average price. I was a little surprised.
"Well, might as well go inside." I tried to take a step forward, but she tugged on my sleeve just like she had that morning. "What now?"
"Try jumping."
"Huh?"
"C'mon. It's an experiment. Get a little running. Start here and see if you can jump that paint river. Your athletic skills aren't so bad, right?"
"They're not so good, either."
"Give it a shot."
"You got it."
I revved myself up a bit and gave my best leap, but as expected, I couldn't clear the river. I landed on both feet, only slightly past the center point.
"That's all you're gonna get."
"Hmm." Kunagisa stepped across, using her coat as a stepping-stone. "If you can't even do it, Shinya-san's the only person here who might even have a chance. He's the only other guy and all."
"Yeah, but those maids seem pretty able-bodied, to be honest. I mean, they carried all your luggage, including those PCs and the workstation. Those things ain't light."
"Yeah, but they're all petite. It's just a matter of width. Hmm, but then again, people always say ability matches necessity. I guess that detail is a little fuzzy. Now, let's see what's going on with Kanami-chan." She approached Kanami-san's body, camera in hand.
She seemed to be particularly interested in examining the body, while I was more concerned with Kanami-san's canvases. There were several lying around, including the cherry blossom picture she had smashed up, as well as the redo. I had to tremble at the sight of it. Even I, who had not so much as a passing interest in art or aesthetics, couldn't deny that I was looking at sheer, untainted beauty.
And then there was the picture I had modeled for. Kanami-san had promised to give it to me, but I couldn't accept something like this. I didn't have nerves of steel, after all.
"I'm probably just babbling here, but…"
I went to pick up the painting, but then stopped myself. It might have been bad to leave any fingerprints behind. Then again, it might not have mattered.
Huh?
"Hey, Tomo."
"Yeah?"
"Isn't there something weird about this painting?"
"You mean that picture of you? Hmm? What's weird? It's a normal painting."
Certainly, Kunagisa's taste wasn't the most ordinary thing in the world, either, but that was beside the point. Something about the painting was off, in a maddeningly subtle way. It wasn't anything about the image itself, but just the strange feeling of absurdity it somehow conveyed.
"Well anyway, go ahead and snap a picture of it, will ya? Something about it bothers me."
"Got it. Hmm, I'm still not finding anything unusual over here."
She appeared to be inspecting Kanami-san's body.
"Really?" I said, walking over to her.
"Yep. I'm no professional though. The cause of death is still a mystery, and I can't narrow down the time of death, either. Without a coroner, it's probably impossible. If only Iria-chan had invited a medical genius here, too. Y'know, like Blackjack or something. Then again, even with a coroner, it would probably be pretty hard without the body's head."
"I guess we're not going to figure anything out here after all."
"Yep." She lifted the corpse up under her arm. Even after years, she had no qualms about touching a dead body. "Kinda takes me back, y'know? It's just like the old days."
"Yeah, you're right, but… It doesn't feel like that to me. It's like I'm seeing a dead body for the first time all over again. It's been bothering me for a while."
There was this sort of an unspeakable, disconcerting feeling. Like when you find a scar on your own body you don't remember having.
"It's jamais vu."
"It's what?"
"The opposite of déjà vu. It means you feel like you're doing something for the first time, even though you've really done it many times before. Supposedly, it happens when your senses have been numbed."
Then my senses must have been numbed some time long ago.
A lot of things had happened abroad, after all.
"Anyway," Kunagisa said. "There aren't any stab wounds. So maybe she was strangled after all. And then to hide the bruises, the killer cut her head off."
"It might sound crazy, but… Here's what I don't get. Whatever the killer used to cut the head off—knife, ax, hatchet, whatever it was—why didn't they just use that to kill her?"
"Maybe they did. There are no stab wounds, but that's just on the body. Maybe they stabbed her in the head."
"Hey, yeah, maybe," I said. "Speaking of that, where do you suppose the head went? I wonder where the killer took it. I mean, if the killer took it."
"Half the island is forest. Maybe they buried it somewhere out there. Or they could've tossed it out to sea. Disposal probably wasn't much of a problem."
"Which brings us back to the question, why did the killer cut her head off?"
But that question was a dead end.
"I've got one more question, Ii-chan. Take a look at this. The head is cut off from the very base of the neck, right? Why is it cut like that? Don't you think that if you were going to decapitate someone, the normal place to make the cut would be around the center of the neck?"
The position of the cut was indeed unnaturally low, but I wouldn't have thought it was something significant.
I crossed my arms and said nothing. This crime scene investigation didn't seem like it would yield any clues after all. At best, we had confirmed that the river of paint couldn't be jumped. But that seemed more like a step backward than progress.
Kunagisa went over to the phone stand by the window and picked up the phone receiver.
"Hmm, nothing unusual here, either."
"You thought there would be?"
"I thought maybe the circuit had been rigged so that calls to this phone would connect to a different phone. But there doesn't seem to be anything wrong on this end. Doesn't look like it's been tinkered with, either."
"The phone, huh? Say, how'd it go again? What did Kanami-san say to Shinya-san?"
"The paint spilled; I'm busy working so don't bother me; stuff like that. But Shinya-san should've gone to check on her even if she told him not to. It may seem strict, but it's his duty as a caretaker."
"You're right about that. But there's no use talking about what's already done." And anyway, Shinya-san already has to bear that burden himself.
It wasn't particularly our place to lay the blame on him, and there was no need to do so. It's a crazy world, but it's also a world where we have to take responsibility for our own actions. And sometimes we also have to take responsibility for our own lack of action.
"Is it possible that they restored the phone back to normal afterward?"
"Well, I wouldn't say it's totally impossible, but it practically is. It's not like plugging and unplugging a cord or something."
"Yeah, good point. I guess we'll have to look at other possibilities. Like the locked door."
"You think I was lying?" Suddenly I heard Shinya-san's voice from behind me, so I spun around. He stood in the doorway with some kind of orange bag in his hands.
"But I could hear Kanami's voice for sure. That's no lie."
From the sound of his voice, he seemed pretty worn out. Which probably goes without saying.
"I'm not saying you lied, Shinya-san. We don't have anything that certain. But is it possible that the voice you heard wasn't hers?"
"No," he answered. "I'd known Kanami for a long time. There's no way I would mistake her voice. Are you doubting me?"
"It's not like that. There's no reason you would have killed her, after all."
"I dunno, maybe we weren't on the best of terms." He gave a weak smile. Then he stepped through the dried paint and approached us. Upon closer inspection, it became clear what the orange bag was. It was a sleeping bag. He looked up at me. "We can't just leave her here, right?" he said. "I got permission from Iria-san and everything. I've decided to bury her on the mountain outback. It's not like Iria-san's going to call the police, and this is all her property anyway. Burying Kanami is all I can do now."
"We'll help you," I said. He tried to think of an appropriate response but realizing the benefit of having two extra people helping him, he said nothing.
Together we lifted up Kanami-san's body and silently put it inside the sleeping bag. I know it goes without saying, but her flesh was completely devoid of warmth.
"Shinya-san, do you have something to dig with?"
"There should be a big shovel back by the entrance. Kunagisa-chan, shall we have you carry it for us? Hmm, say, is that a digital camera?"
"Yup." Kunagisa nodded. "We have to keep a record of the crime scene for when Mister Detective shows up. I don't think the corpse will demand publicity rights, after all, right?"
That was probably the worst way she could've phrased it, but Shinya-san responded with a nod and a smirk. "I see. Shall we go, then?"
"Um, Shinya-san? About this painting…"
"Hmm? Ah. Kanami's painting. It's nice, isn't it? It's the last painting she ever did, but she was intending to give it to you, so please take it."
"Is it okay?"
"I want to honor her last wishes."
Her last wishes.
Yes, she was dead. Nothing left to fulfill.
"Get her feet, will you? I'll carry the head, and—" He cut himself off, most likely realizing there was no head to carry. Without saying anything, I picked up the legs.
He no doubt wished he could bury the head with the body, but its whereabouts remained unknown. Either the killer was hiding it somewhere, or it had already been tossed into the woods or thrown into the sea as Kunagisa said.
Holding on to the legs, it occurred to me how heavy the body was. Heavier than you'd expect. It probably wasn't impossible for a single person to carry, but two people were definitely better.
From that point on, none of us spoke. In silence, we lifted her body and left the mansion; in silence, we headed for the mountain in the back; and in silence, we dug a hole.
The sleeping bag that held her body was such a cheap-looking orange excuse for a coffin, I couldn't help but find it comical. At that moment, I felt like human death is nothing but a big joke.
People die. That was something I knew all too well, to the point that it was stifling, to the point that I wanted to vomit, and Kunagisa knew it, too. And Shinya-san, being a full-fledged adult, had no doubt been touched by death in the past as well.
That's probably why we were all so quiet.
Finally, Shinya-san spoke. "You two can go back now," he said. "I'm going to stay here a little longer."
I wanted to say something, but I didn't. Kunagisa pulled on my hand, and we left without a word. Maybe Shinya-san was going to cry. Maybe not. Either way, we no longer had a reason to linger.
After all, we were just bystanders.
"I wonder if it was okay to just go ahead and bury her," Kunagisa said.
"I think so. Shinya-san seems to be the only thing she had resembling a loved one, and that's what he wanted to do. And we couldn't just leave her lying in the atelier all week."
"True. True, but…"
"Say, Tomo. How big a crime do you suppose it is to abandon a corpse?"
"You'd probably get less than a three-year sentence. But you'd probably get off with parole, too. But you and I are both underages anyway, so no worries. No matter what happens, we can get off with a little money."
What a tasteless conversation.
Not that I was looking for a tasteful one.
"I'm just babbling here…"
Kunagisa gave me a funny look.
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