Read The Devotion Of Suspect X for Free Online

But, if you weren’t going to turn yourselves in, I thought it might be hard managing with just the two of you.”
    Yasuko let her hands fall away from her face. She remembered something odd Ishigami had said over the phone. How a woman couldn’t dispose of a body by herself—
    “Is there some way we
don’t
have to turn ourselves in?” Misato asked.
    Yasuko looked up. Ishigami tilted his head, thinking. His face betrayed no emotion.
    “It seems to me that you have two options: hide the fact that anything happened, or hide the fact that you had anything to do with it. Either way, you have to get rid of the body.”
    “Can we?”
    “Misato,” Yasuko said sternly. “We’re not doing anything of the sort.”
    “Please, Mom.” She turned back to Ishigami. “You really think we can?”
    “It will be difficult, but not impossible,” Ishigami replied, his voice calmly mechanical. To Yasuko, this lack of emotion made everything he said sound somehow more logical than her own rattled thoughts.
    “Mom,” Misato was saying, “let’s let him help us. It’s the only way!”
    “But I couldn’t—” Yasuko looked at Ishigami.
    His narrow eyes were fixed on the floor. He was waiting for them to decide.
    Yasuko remembered what Sayoko had told her, that the math teacher had a crush on her. That he only came to buy lunch at the shop when she was there.
    Now she was glad Sayoko had said so, or she would have seriously doubted Ishigami’s sanity. Why else would someone go so far out of his way to help a neighbor to whom he had barely even spoken? He had already risked arrest just by coming into the room.
    “Wouldn’t somebody find the body? If we hid it, that is,” Yasuko asked.
    “We haven’t decided whether we will hide the body yet or not,” Ishigami replied. “Sometimes it’s best not to conceal anything. We’ll decide what to do with the body once we have all the information at hand. The only thing we know now for certain is that we can’t leave him lying here like this.”
    “What information?”
    “Information about this man,” Ishigami explained, looking down at the corpse. “About his life. I need to know his full name, address, age, occupation. The reason he came here. Where he was planning to go afterward. Does he have family? Please tell me all that you know.”
    “Well, I—”
    “No, actually,” Ishigami cut her off, “before that, let’s move the body. We should clean up this room as quickly as possible. I’m sure there are mountains of evidence here as it is now.” Before he had even finished talking, Ishigami set about lifting the head and torso of the corpse.
    “Move it? To where?”
    “To my place,” Ishigami said, with a look that indicated this was the obvious choice; and he hoisted the body over his shoulder. He was surprisingly strong. Yasuko noticed the words
Judo club
embroidered in white thread on his navy windbreaker. Stepping out the door, Ishigami quickly made his way into the neighboring apartment, with Yasuko and Misato anxiously following. The teacher’s apartment was a mess, with piles of mathematic books and journals scattered about the front room. Still carrying the body, Ishigami kicked a few piles aside to clear a space on the tatami mats. Then he casually lowered his burden to the floor. The body fell in a heap, and the dead man’s eyes, frozen open, stared into the room.
    Ishigami turned back to the mother and daughter, who stood at the open apartment door. “Ms. Hanaoka, I want you to stay here. Your daughter should go next door and start cleaning. Use the vacuum, and get it as clean as possible.”
    Misato nodded, her face pale, and after a quick glance at her mother she vanished from the entryway.
    “Close the door,” Ishigami said to Yasuko.
    “Oh … okay.” Yasuko did as she was told, then stood in hesitation.
    “You might as well come in. It’s not as clean as your place, I’m afraid.”
    Ishigami pulled a small cushion off a chair and placed