Chapter 24 Chapter Twenty-Four

After talking on the phone with Kobayashi, Kaga hoped that he would investigate Naomi Maehara's alibi. "His parents will definitely resist, and you don't mind. If they are too stubborn, you say that you will go to his room by yourself. When Naomi comes out, I hope you will question him carefully. Yesterday His parents told me that he went to the game room. You have to ask which game room it is, what games he played, and whether anything happened to impress him. Your questions should be detailed enough to impress the other party. Annoyed, though I don't think he'll show it. Then you just casually check to see if he has a computer."

It seems that Kaga is suspicious of Naomi Maehara, but he didn't tell Matsumiya the reason. After Kaga gave these instructions to Matsunomiya, he said that he was going to see Tajima Harumi. "Why?" Song Gong asked. "In order for them to settle this matter themselves." This was Kaga's answer. He's back, and he's still with Chun-mi.What will happen next, even Matsumiya can't predict. Yaeko, who had gone to the entrance, came back with a gloomy expression. "His father is Chunmei." Akio nodded in response.Then, Harumi Tajima walked out from behind Yaeko, with Kaga standing behind her.

"Why did you bring my sister here?" Maehara asked Kaga. "Your sister should be the person who knows your mother best?" Kaga said, "That's why I let her come here. I have already explained the situation to her." "...That's right." Maehara looked up at his sister with an embarrassed expression, "I know you will be surprised, but these are the facts." "Where's mom?" Chunmei asked. "The room inside." "Really?" Chunmei muttered and took a deep breath. "Can I see my mother?" "No problem, please."

Hearing what Kaga said, Chunmei left the room, behind her was the eyes of the Maehara couple. "Officer Matsumiya," Kaga turned to Matsumiya, "Have you asked Mr. Maehara's son about it?" "I asked." "What did he do on Friday?" "He said he went to the game room and other places, and didn't come back home until after eight o'clock in the evening." After speaking, Songgong whispered to Kaga, "He has a computer." Kaga nodded in satisfaction, looking back and forth at the Maehara couple. "Reinforced police officers will arrive soon, please prepare."

This sentence surprised Song Gong too. "Have you contacted the headquarters?" He asked in a low voice. "I called them on the way here, but I put them on hold nearby to hear from us." Matsumiya couldn't figure out what Kaga was thinking, and was puzzled.Kaga seemed to penetrate his mind, and gave him a meaningful wink, as if to say, leave everything to me. "Excuse me, are you going to arrest my mother?" Maehara asked. "Of course," Kaga replied, "murder is the most serious crime." "But you have also seen her situation. She doesn't know what she is doing at all. Isn't this not incompetent?"

"Of course, the police will do work such as mental status appraisal. But how the procuratorate will judge its results, we don't know. The duty of the police is to arrest criminals, and it doesn't matter whether the other party has the capacity to act .” "Does that mean the court will acquit her?" "I don't know if the word "innocent" should be used, or maybe even the prosecution should not be used. But it is not for us to draw conclusions, but for the prosecution. If there is a prosecution, all this will have to be decided by the judge. gone."

"Can you," Zhaofu said, "please find a way to make her not suffer too much? I don't think she will be able to stay in the detention center. She has that kind of disease, and she is such an old person..." "On this issue, I think the superiors should make a judgment. But according to my experience, if there are no very special circumstances, there will be no exceptions. Your mother can eat and go to the toilet by herself. I I think not only in the detention center, but also in the detention center, she will be treated the same as other suspects." "Will she... still go to the detention center?"

"The premise is that she is charged, and you and your wife will definitely go in." "I know this, we are already mentally prepared..." "Well, for such an old lady, this is indeed a suffering. It should be said that it is quite painful." Kaga continued, "The room over there must not be described as clean, and the toilet is squatting. It's hot in summer and cold in winter. The food is rough and tastes bad. It's impossible to bring personal belongings in without permission, and it's probably hard to bring your mother's favorite doll inside. In the confined space, every day of her life will be lonely and boring.” He shrugged at this point, “Of course, we have no way of knowing how much she can recognize these pains.”

Akio Maehara's expression twisted in pain, he bit his lip.Whether he showed such an expression because he envisioned that he would lead such a life in the future, or because he was worried about his elderly mother, Matsumiya couldn't judge. "Mr. Maehara," Kaga said to him calmly, "do you really want this?" Maehara's body shivered as if he had been attacked by someone.He turned his ashen face to Kaga, but the area from the ears to the neck was flushed. "What do you mean?" "Just to make sure, your mother doesn't have the ability to explain her actions, so you made a statement on her behalf, which turned her into a murderer. I just want to make sure that this is your final answer."

"The final answer? But," Zhaofu said incoherently, "we can't help it. We also want to hide it for her, but paper can't cover fire." "Really, then I won't say anything more." Kaga looked at his watch, "Do you want to make some preparations? I think you won't be back for a while." Yaeko stood up. "Can I go and change clothes?" "Please, Maehara-san, do you want to..." "No, I'll just wear these." Yaeko left the room alone. "Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette?" Maehara asked. "Please do what you want," Kaga replied.

Maehara picked up a Mild Seven Star cigarette and lit it with a disposable lighter.He puffed out the smoke ring violently, with no sign of enjoyment on his expression. "What mood are you in now?" Kaga sat opposite Maehara. "Of course it's hard, thinking I'm going to lose everything I've built in this life." "What about your mother?" "To my mother...how should I put it?" Maehara took a deep breath of the cigarette, paused for a moment, and then slowly exhaled, "Since she got that disease, I have gradually lost my son and my mother to her. She doesn't seem to recognize me anymore. Sometimes I think, is this the end of the relationship between parents and children?" "I heard that your father also suffers from dementia." "yes." "Who took care of him?" "It was my mother, she was fine at the time." "So that's the case, then your mother really suffered a lot." "I thought so too. I wonder if she felt relieved when my father passed away." Then Kaga asked after a round of breathing, "Do you think so?" "Well, because it's really difficult to take care of him." Kaga didn't nod, for some reason, he glanced at Matsumiya, and then turned his gaze back to Maehara. "Couples who have been together all year round have deep emotions that others cannot understand, so they can endure the hard work of caring for the other half. I think they may also have the mood to escape, and even hope that the other party will die earlier Thoughts. But when that day comes, they will definitely not feel relaxed. When they are freed from the life of caring for each other, they will face strong self-loathing again." "……what do you mean?" "They feel that they haven't done enough, that it's miserable that the other half ended their life in such a way, and they blame themselves, which sometimes makes them sick." "You mean that my mother was also ill from this?" "I don't know this. I can only say that the inner world of the elderly is extremely complicated, and it is even more so when they realize that they are about to face death. All we can do for these elderly is to respect their wishes. No matter How stupid their behavior may seem has very important implications for them personally." "I think... I have always respected my mother's will, although I don't know if my mother still has the so-called will now." Kaga stared at Maehara who said these words, and smiled slightly. "Yeah, that's fine, I'm sorry for bringing up such nonsense." "No." Maehara said and stubbed out the cigarette butt in the ashtray. Kaga looked at his watch and stood up. "So, can you bring your mother out with us?" "Okay." Akio said and left his seat. Kaga looked back at Matsunomiya and nodded, motioning for him to follow. When they came to the inner room, they found Chunmei sitting at the door.She stared at her mother sitting in the corridor without saying a word, who was curled up and squatting there, still as motionless as a rock. "We want to take your mother out." Kaga said behind Chunmei's back. "Yeah." She replied in a low voice, stood up and walked towards Zhenghui. "Before then," Kaga said, "if your mother has something important that makes her feel at ease, please take it out. We can negotiate with the detention center and let her bring it in." Harumi nodded and scanned the room.She seemed to remember something quickly and came to the small tea table.She opened the lower door and pulled out what appeared to be a book. "Can you take it with you?" she asked Kaga. "Please let me have a look." Kaga opened the book and handed it to Maehara, "This seems to be your mother's treasure." For a moment, Matsunomiya saw Maehara's body trembling, and what Kaga handed him was a small photo album. Akio hasn't seen that photo album for decades, and he knows that there are many old photos in it.The last time I saw it was probably in middle school, and after that, he sorted out his photos by himself. On the page that Kaga showed him was embedded a photo of Masae as a young man and Akio as a boy.As a teenager, Akio wore a baseball cap and held a black, slender tube in his hand. It was the graduation ceremony of elementary school, and Zheng Hui also came at that time.She smiled and held her son's hand with her right hand, and raised her other hand slightly upwards.A small sign was clutched in that hand, and Akio couldn't see what it was. An emotion welled up in him. Although suffering from dementia, Zhenghui still cherishes the memories of her time with her son.The memory of the time when she devoted herself to raising her children is the best medicine to heal the pain in her heart. And he was about to send such a mother to the detention center—— If she had committed a crime, there was nothing she could do about it, but she was innocent.In order to protect the only child—this reason may sound high-sounding, but in the end, they only do this so that they can retreat in the future, all of which are caused by selfish and self-interested thoughts. Even though Zheng Hui was already demented, it was definitely not what a person should do to put the blame on his mother. But he pushed back the photo album handed to him, and gritted his teeth, holding back the tears that were about to well up in his eyes. "Don't you want to look at it again?" Kaga asked, "When your mother takes it to the detention center, you will never see it again. How about taking a closer look? We are not in a hurry." "No, no need, it will only make you sadder after seeing it." "yes?" Kaga closed the album and handed it back to Harumi.