Chapter 21 Chapter 21

Just after ten o'clock in the morning, the intercom rang. The couple sitting across the dining table looked at each other. Yaeko stood up silently, picked up the handset of the walkie-talkie, and responded softly. "... Ah, thank you for your hard work." After she finished speaking, she put the receiver back and looked at Akio with a stiff expression. "Here they come." "Yeah." He replied as he stood up from his chair. "Where do you tell them?" "Go to the living room." "Well, that's fine." Akio came to the entrance and opened the door, and saw two strong men standing outside, they were both familiar faces, they were Kaga and Matsumiya.Because he only mentioned that he had something to say, Akio thought that the police might have sent an agent who had met him.

"I'm sorry to ask you to make a special trip." Zhaofu bowed his head and saluted. "I heard that you have something important to tell us." Song Gong asked. "Well, yes... let's talk inside, please." Zhaofu opened the door and greeted the two of them to enter the room, and the criminal policemen walked in after some courtesy. They were ushered into a six-tatami room, and two burly policemen sat down, making the room look cramped and cramped. Yaeko brought tea and bowed to the two of them.Instead of toasting to tea, however, they were eager to know why the couple had called the police.

"May I ask if there is any progress in the investigation of the Ginkgo Park case?" Yaeko asked cautiously. "It's just started, but some information has been collected." Song Gong replied. "Any clues?" Akio asked. "Well, this..." Matsunomiya looked back and forth between Akio and Yaeko in surprise. Kaga reached for the teacup, took a sip of the tea and looked at Akio.That gaze seemed to be able to see through people's hearts, which made Akio feel timid. "Have you checked the lawn? It's my lawn." Akio said, "Any results?"

Matsumiya looked at Kaga beside him in confusion, and the latter spoke first. "There is grass on the corpse, we have compared it." "So it's like this... How about my lawn? Is it the same as the one above?" "Why do you want to know this?" "It looks the same." However, Kaga didn't answer right away, his expression showed that he was thinking about whether he should give an affirmative answer to this. "If it's the same lawn, what are you going to do?" Akio sighed deeply after hearing this sentence. "It seems that I did the right thing in bringing you here. Anyway, sooner or later something will come out."

"Mr. Maehara, what are you—" Matsumiya leaned forward anxiously. "Mr. Kaga, Mr. Matsumiya," Akio said with his back arched, his hands propped on the tatami mat and his head bowed, "I'm really sorry. The person who put the girl's body into the toilet in the park...is me." Akio felt as if he was jumping off a cliff, and since then he has lost his retreat.But at the same time, he also developed a feeling of resignation to fate. A breathless silence dominated the entire room, and Akio kept his head down, so he couldn't see the expressions of the detectives at this time.

Yaeko sobbed aside, and she apologized in a low voice while crying.Then Akio felt his wife bowed his head just like him. "You said you killed that girl?" Songgong asked, but there was no surprise in his tone. It seemed that he also expected that Akio would confess something about the case. "No." Akio said and looked up, and he found that the expressions of the two police officers were more serious than before. "I didn't kill her, but...the murderer was indeed someone from my family." "You mean the murderers were your family?" "Yes." Akio nodded.

Matsumiya slowly turned her face to Yaeko who was still bowing her head. "No, not my wife." Akio said. "So……" "Actually," Akio took a deep breath, still feeling a little hesitant, and when he completely cut off this emotion, he said, "It's my mother." "Your mother?" Matsunomiya raised his eyebrows suspiciously, and looked at Kaga beside him. Kaga asked, "Is the murderer your mother?" "yes." "Is that the old lady we saw two days ago?" Kaga confirmed without hesitation. "Yes." Akio's chin shrank back, and his heartbeat was gradually accelerating.

Should I do this myself? ——Hesitation was flooding in his heart. There is no other way - in order to dispel this hesitation, he said to himself in his heart. "When the police officer showed us the photo of the girl for the first time, my wife and I replied that we hadn't seen it, right?" "Yes," Kaga nodded, "Isn't that the truth?" "My wife has actually seen her a few times, and that kid has been in my backyard before." "Backyard?" Kaga looked at Yaeko. She lowered her head and spoke. "The girl saw my mother-in-law playing with dolls on the corridor in the backyard a few times. There is a wooden fence in our backyard, and she seems to have walked in from there. She said that she saw the dolls from the gap at the bottom of the wall, so Let my mother-in-law show it to her. But I don't know which family she is from."

The two officers looked at each other. "Where is your mother now?" Song Gong asked. "In her own room, a room inside." "Can we meet her?" "Well, of course, it's just..." Akio looked back and forth between the faces of the two criminal policemen, "As I mentioned before, it's hard to guarantee that I can speak clearly with my mother's appearance. Even she herself doesn't remember doing it herself. What happened... So, I think there will probably be no results in asking questions." "That's it." Songgong looked at Kaga.

"But please take us to meet her first." Kaga said. "Ah, okay, I understand, I'm really sorry..." After Akio stood up, the detectives also left their seats, while Yaeko still lowered her head. They came to the corridor and walked in. At the end was a Japanese-style sliding door.Zhaofu opened the door gently, and there was only a low table and a Buddhist altar in the room, which looked extremely deserted.There used to be dressing tables and other furniture here, but after Masae got Alzheimer's, Yaeko took care of them in the same way.She had said before that when Zhenghui was gone, she wanted to move into this room with Zhaofu.

Zheng Hui was squatting on the corridor facing the backyard, and he didn't seem to notice that someone opened the sliding door, and he was muttering something to the puppet in front of him.It was a dirty old doll. "This is my mother." Akio said. The detectives remained silent, as if they were considering what to do next. "Can we have a chat with her?" Song Gong asked. "It's possible..." Song Gong approached Zheng Hui, squatted down, and looked closely at the doll. "Hello." However, Zhenghui didn't answer, and didn't even look at the detective, but just stroked the hair of the puppet in his hand. "As you can see." Akio said to Kaga. Kaga crossed his arms and looked at the scene in front of him, and finally spoke to Matsumiya. "Let's listen to Mr. Maehara and the others to talk about the situation first." Song Gong stood up and nodded: "Yes." Akio watched Kaga and Matsumiya go back to the room before and closed the door, while Masae still kept stroking the doll's hair. "I think I got home around six, and I worked odd jobs until five-thirty. Then I went to my mother-in-law's room to see how she was doing, but I was terrified by what I saw. A The little girl was lying limp and motionless in the middle of the room, and my mother-in-law was playing with a broken doll in the hallway." The detectives took notes on what Yaeko said.Matsumiya seems to remember it in detail, while Kaga is probably just memorizing the main points and has little time to start writing. "I shook the girl's body and it looked like she was not breathing, and I knew very quickly that she was dead." Listening to Yaeko's words, Akio felt cold sweat dripping from his armpits. This was a lie made up by the two of them. In order to avoid contradictions and unnaturalness that would be suspected by the police, they verified it many times.But after all, this is a story made up by laymen. In the eyes of professional police detectives, it may be full of loopholes.But even so, he figured they'd have to push through, because it was the only way out for them. "I asked my mother-in-law what happened to the child, but she couldn't give me a good answer like my mother-in-law. She didn't even seem to understand what I was asking, but after I kept asking her, she finally said that the child Break her precious doll, and she'll teach her a lesson." "A lesson?" Song Gong looked extremely puzzled. "That is to say," Akio interrupted, "it's probably a kind of conflict between children. I don't know what the girl did, but she must have angered my mother, or maybe she was too angry. She was naughty. In short, I think my mother killed her out of a desire to teach the other party a lesson. Although she was old, her strength was not small, and a child of that age might not be able to resist." While he himself said this, he also felt no confidence in the credibility of these words. Would the detectives really believe this inference? Matsumiya glanced at Yaeko. "Then, Mrs. Maehara, you later..." "I called my husband," she replied, "I think it's around six-thirty." "Did you talk to him about it in detail on the phone?" "No... because I really don't know what to say, I just want him to come back quickly. Also, my sister-in-law was going to take care of my mother-in-law, so I asked my husband to call her and tell her not to come. " These are all true words, perhaps because of this, Yaeko's tone became more natural. "Mrs. Maehara," Matsunomiya said looking at Yaeko, "what were you going to do? Did you ever think about calling the police?" "Of course I've thought about it, but I want to discuss it with my husband first." "So when your husband came home, did he also see the corpse?" Akio nodded. "I was very surprised. After listening to my wife's situation, I felt dark." This is also true. "Then who was the first to propose the disposal of the corpse?" Song Gong asked this question that went to the heart of the case. Yaeko glanced at Akio, and the other party felt it too, and saw him take a breath. "I can't say who proposed it first. It should be said that I thought of going this way without knowing it. If I notify the police, I won't be able to live here any longer, and I can hide it if I can. Discussions. And then we started thinking maybe it would be a good idea to move the body elsewhere..." As Zhaofu said, he thought that the house could only be sold.But there have been murders here, and who would want to buy it? "Then why did you throw the corpse to Ginkgo Park?" Song Gong asked. "There is no deep reason, I just can't think of any other places to go. I don't have a car at home, so I can't go very far." "When did you go to dump the body?" "We waited until very late, and it was already early morning, about two or three o'clock." "Then," Song Gong held the pen, "please tell us the details at that time."