Chapter 25 Chapter Twenty-Five

Akio thought that this police officer might have seen through everything.He has realized that the murderer is not the old woman, but the junior high school student on the second floor.That's why he wanted to use various means to put psychological pressure on the old woman's only son to tell the truth. He warned himself that he must not lose to such a measure that he came up with out of desperation.The police used this method to cover his words, indicating that they did not have any conclusive evidence.Because they can't find another way, they resort to psychological warfare.In other words, as long as you persist to the end, you can get through this level.

I can't be shaken, I can't be defeated—— At this moment, the cell phone rang, and Song Gong reached into his coat pocket, and took out his cell phone. "I'm Matsumiya....Well, okay, I understand." After saying a few more words, he hung up the phone and said to Kaga, "The director and his car have arrived and are waiting at the gate. " "Understood." Kaga replied. At this moment, Yaeko's voice came from the corridor. "I'm all set." She wore a sweater over the shirt and jeans, which seemed to be a more casual outfit for her. "Then what about your son?" Kaga asked Akio, "He may have to live alone for a while."

"Um... yes. Harumi." Akio said to his sister, "Excuse me, can Naomi ask you to take care of her?" Chunmei hugged the album and was silent for a moment, then said in a low voice, "Okay." "I'm sorry." Akio apologized to her again. "Then, Ms. Tajima, we are going to take your mother away." "Yeah." Chunmei said, putting her hand on Zhenghui's shoulder. "Xiaohui, we are about to hit the road, stand up." Zheng Hui was urged to move in a hurry.She stood up supported by Chunmei, and walked towards Akio and his party.

"Officer Matsunomiya," Kaga said, "handcuff the suspect." "Huh?" Song Gong's voice seemed a little surprised. "Please put handcuffs on her," Kaga repeated, "If you don't have them, I will." "No, I have." Songgong said and took out the handcuffs. "Wait a minute, don't you need to put handcuffs on such an old lady?" Akio said without thinking. "It's just a formality." "But—" Akio said as he looked at Zheng Hui's hand, and couldn't help but gasped. Her fingertips were dyed bright red.

"This is... what's going on?" Akio muttered, looking at his mother's fingertips. "Didn't I tell you yesterday?" Chunmei replied, "This is the mark left by her playing makeup games. It seems that she messed with lipstick." "Ok……" At this time, another row of red fingers appeared in Akio's mind, which was the hand of his late father Shoichiro whom he had seen a few years ago. "Can you?" Song Gong asked Akio holding the handcuffs. He nodded slightly, looking at Zhenghui's hand made him feel sad. The moment Matsunomiya put the handcuffs on Masae, Kaga suddenly stopped him.

"Does she need crutches to go out?" "Oh... yes." Chunmei replied. "You may not be able to use crutches if you are in handcuffs. Where are the things?" "It should be placed with the umbrella in the shoe cabinet at the door, brother, can you go and get it for me?" Akio agreed and walked out of the room, passing through the dark corridor. There is a shoe cabinet in the corner of the shoe-off place at the door, with a slender door on one side, and an umbrella inside.Because the umbrellas they usually use are placed outside, they rarely have the opportunity to open this door, and he rarely sees the crutch that Zheng Hui often uses that his sister mentioned.

After opening the door, he saw a cane mixed among several umbrellas.The handle is gray and about the length of a women's umbrella. When he took out the crutch, there was a "jingle" on it, which was not unfamiliar to him. Akio returned to Masae's room with his crutches. At this moment, Harumi was spreading out a piece of burden cloth, and put Masae's belongings and the photo album on it. The two detectives stood beside Yaeko and looked at it. she. "Did you find the crutch?" Kaga asked. Akio silently handed the things to him. Kaga handed it to Chunmei again: "Then let's go."

Chunmei stuffed the cane into her mother's hand: "Here, this is Xiaohui's cane, you have to hold it tightly." Her eyes were full of tears, and her voice trembled because of it. Zhenghui took a step expressionlessly under Chunmei's urging, she left the room and walked in the corridor, Akio watched her back from behind. Jingle, jingle—the bell on the crutch was ringing. Akio turned his gaze to the bell, and there was a sign hanging on the bell, with the words "Maehara Masae" crookedly engraved on it, which was a hand-carved work. The moment he saw it, a violent heart tremor hit Akio, and he felt that he could hardly breathe.

This name tag is exactly the one that Zheng Hui held in the hand that he saw in the photo album just now. His memories came flooding back suddenly.When he was about to graduate from elementary school, this was his homework in art class.The teacher told him at the time that the original intention of this assignment was to allow them to hang the name tag engraved with their own name on their own things after they went to middle school, but it could also be made as a gift for those who have cared for them, so Akio engraved his mother's name on it.He bought a bell at a nearby stationery store and gave it to Zheng Hui by stringing it together with a sign.

For decades, Zhenghui has cherished it and kept it with him.Not only that, but I also hung it on the things I usually use, before suffering from Alzheimer's. This brand name can make her happy so much, perhaps because it was the first gift her son gave her. The trembling of the heart seems to be unable to stop, as if it is triggering some kind of resonance, it becomes more and more intense.A line of defense in Zhaofu's heart, a line of defense that he was struggling to support, began to collapse with a loud noise. He didn't even have the strength to stand up, and he collapsed on the ground on the spot.

"What's wrong with you?" Kaga sensed his sudden change and asked immediately. This is already the limit, tears flowed from Akio's eyes, and the protective wall in his heart burst. "I'm sorry, I'm really...very sorry." He slammed his head heavily on the tatami, "We lied, all of this is a lie. We made up the claim that my mother killed someone, and my mother is not the murderer." No one raised a sound at his yelling, it must all be because they were too shocked.He raised his head slowly, and first glanced at Yaeko.She was already sitting on the ground, her facial muscles twisted in pain, her eyes dimmed with despair. "I'm sorry, I can't hold on anymore." Akio said to his wife, "Let me stop all this, I can't do this kind of thing, I really can't..." Yaeko drooped her head weakly, and she herself might have reached the limit of her patience. "I see, so who is the murderer?" Perhaps because Kaga's tone of voice was too calm, Akio looked back at the police officer, and Kaga's eyes were filled with an indescribable pity. Akio thought, he really knew everything a long time ago, so he was not surprised by his confession. "Is it your son?" Facing Kaga's question, Akio nodded silently, and at the same time, Yaeko began to cry loudly.She fell to the ground, her back shaking. "Officer Songgong, please go to the second floor." "Please wait a moment." Yaeko said with her head down, "I...I'll take my son down..." She was already sobbing. "Okay, then please." Yaeko staggered out of the room. Kaga knelt down in front of Akio. "It's great to be able to tell the truth, you almost made a serious mistake." "Officer, you really saw through our lies from the very beginning." "No, I didn't know the truth when you called the police, and I didn't find any contradictions when I listened to your confessions." "Then why?" Kaga looked back at Masae. "It's the red fingers." "What happened to the red finger..." "When I saw them, I wondered, when were they dyed? If it was before the case, there must have been red finger prints on the neck of the corpse. Because your mother wore gloves I happened to be there the day after the incident, and I can confirm this. However, there were no red finger marks on the body, and your statement did not mention that you ever erased the marks. This means that they were in the It was dyed red after the incident, but I have no clue about the lipstick your mother used at that time, because there is no lipstick in the room. There is no such thing. " "The lipstick must be Yaeko..." After Akio said this, he realized that this was actually impossible. "Your oversized dressing table is on the second floor. Your mother can't go upstairs, right?" "Then where did she come from..." "If not in this house, where is it? I can only assume that the lipstick was taken out by someone else, and who was that person? So I asked your sister if she knew your mother had recently Where is the lipstick you used.—Ms. Tajima, please show us that thing." Chunmei opened the handbag and took out a plastic bag from it, which contained a lipstick. "This is the lipstick, I've checked the color and can be sure of that. If we check the ingredients in detail, we'll have further proof." "Why do you have this lipstick?" Akio asked Chunmei. "Mr. Maehara, that's the problem." Kaga said, "It's not surprising that your mother fiddled with Ms. Tajima's lipstick while she wasn't looking. It's strange that it's in Ms. Tajima's hands now. Madam Shima, when was the last time you saw your mother before today?" "……Thursday night." "Okay, so that means the lipstick left the house after that. Do you know what that means, Mr. Maehara?" "I see," said Akio, "that means my mother painted her fingers red on Thursday night, right?" "That's really the only conclusion we can draw, and that contradicts what you have said about your mother being the murderer. I have mentioned more than once that there were no red finger marks on the body." Akio clenched his fist so tightly that his nails almost pierced his skin. "So that's what happened..." A sense of exhaustion swept through his body. Matsumiya was speechless, he stood blankly in the corridor, listening to the conversation between Kaga and Akio Maehara. What a stupid and shallow crime, he thought.Even in order to protect his son, Songgong still couldn't understand how Akio could use his old mother as a dead ghost.However, Maehara's ability to confess at the last moment is probably the only salvation he brought to himself. But since Kaga noticed Redfinger's question, why didn't he point it out on the spot?Had he done so, the truth would have been revealed sooner. "Why? Didn't you say that I don't need to go to the police station?" There was a voice upstairs, it was Naomi's voice. "Because it's gone now, they all know..." Yaeko cried. "I don't care about it. How did it happen? Didn't I do everything you said?" Then there was a sound of throwing something, and then an exclamation. "It's all your fault, it's all your fault!" Naomi screamed wildly. "sorry Sorry." While Matsumiya was thinking about what to do, Kaga strode across the corridor and went upstairs.