Makoto and Sae enjoyed a nice morning, drinking tea and relaxing together. Though her work situation was still very much in the back of her mind, for her own mental health, she decided that the best thing she could do with herself until Emiko got there was to recharge her spirit a little—or at least attempt to. Sitting in Sae's backyard, listening to the shishi odoshi fountain and the gurgling of the koi pond, warm in spite of the January weather thanks to Sae's outdoor heater, Makoto was feeling quite at peace.
She hadn't looked at her phone all day until Sae brought it outside to her. "Your friend is calling," she said, holding out the ringing phone for Makoto to answer.
"Oh, thanks Sis," said Makoto, taking the phone from her. "Hi Emiko," she said, answering. She gave her sister an appreciative nod as Sae stepped back into the house, leaving Makoto to her phone call.
"Hi Mako," said Emiko. "Just letting you know I'm out of the subway station and on my way to your place."
"Oh good," said Makoto. "Did you ever hear back from Tae? Did she do the autopsy?"
"She did eventually text me back last night, but she said she hasn't done an autopsy in a few weeks, so it couldn't have been one of hers."
Makoto frowned. "Too bad… It would've been nice to have such direct access to someone knowledgeable with the case."
"Yeah, sorry. I'm still happy to look at your photos for you though. The medical examiner track at the Academy goes way deeper with forensic photography than you would have, so I might still be able to help."
"I appreciate it. See you soon. You want some tea when you get here?"
"I would love some tea. It's goddamn freezing out today."
Makoto chuckled and said goodbye to her friend, saying nothing about the space heater that had allowed her to remain nice and toasty in spite of being outside in the dead of winter. Getting up, she turned off the heater and headed inside, preparing to brew a fresh pot of tea. After handing Makoto her phone, Sae left to run some much-needed household errands, so she'd be absent for a while, leaving Makoto and her friend to spread out in the living room without being in anyone's way.
By the time Emiko arrived, tea was ready, and files and photographs were lying in organized piles on the coffee table.
"Hi Emi, glad you made it. I'd have felt horrible if you'd died of hypothermia on your way over to help me with my cases," she joked.
"Yeah, me too. I wouldn't be surprised if we get snow—it's that cold out."
"That sounds pretty. We haven't had a good snow in a while. I love how clean everything looks after a fresh snowfall."
"Yeah, it's beautiful provided it doesn't stick around long enough to turn gray and sludgy." Emiko kicked off her boots and hung her coat by the door, padding into the living room to where she could see a pot of tea waiting for her. She gratefully poured herself a cup. "Do you have a cup already?"
"I do—it's over here. I'm ready for a refill though." Makoto grabbed her teacup from the kitchen counter and brought it to the coffee table, setting it down in front of Emiko before taking a seat. Emiko filled her cup, and the two were ready to get down to business.
"So, these are your forensic documents," said Emiko, studying the layout on the table.
"Yes," said Makoto. "Here you can read the autopsy report, and here are the pictures from the scene. I need to warn you, though, it was a decapitation by train, and it's pretty brutal." She gestured to the relevant papers.
"I'm a big girl. I can handle it," she Emiko, reaching for the photos to examine first. Despite the warning, she still blanched. "Jesus…"
"Yeah," said Makoto, watching her friend study the pictures. "Pretty rough, huh?"
Emiko nodded. "So, what case is this? You said it's from New Year's, which was before your missing husband… So who is he?"
Makoto sighed, and proceeded to give her the short version of her involvement with the case: The phone call from Kento Abe's mom, and how this was actually Sato's case, not hers—and that it was supposed to be closed already. She explained about how thin the file had been, about how Kento had disappeared for over a month before showing up dead, about how the failed search for the CCTV had led her to interviewing the security guard and the girlfriend.
"Okay, I'm following you," said Emiko. "So the mom needed convincing before she'd accept that her son killed himself, your job was to communicate the evidence to her so she'd let it go, and you ended up having to do all sorts of extra digging just to sort that all out."
"Yeah, and it turned out not to be at all straightforward."
"And I take it that all that due diligence has still left you with some lingering doubts, or I wouldn't be here, looking at these gory pictures. Right?"
"Right," Makoto nodded.
"Okay, so let me hear your doubts," said Emiko. "Why has doing all that extra work still not left you feeling convinced that this guy laid his own neck down on the rails?"
Makoto took a breath, caressing the teacup in her hands to warm them as she thought about how to parse her explanation. "Okay, so… the security guard blamed his negligence on the presence of an attractive woman who came into his booth to have sex with him." Emiko made an astonished face, but didn't say anything to interrupt, so Makoto just kept going. "Thinking that that might have been Kento Abe's girlfriend, whom his mom had told me she was suspicious of, I showed him the girlfriend's picture, and he said, 'No, no, that's not her.' I was just then thinking I'd hit a brick wall when he points to this picture, which was only out on the table by happenstance, and says, 'That might be her.'" Makoto handed Emiko one of the photos from the Nightlife footage, the one where the mystery woman and Kento were just leaving the bar together, hands all over each other.
Emiko whistled appreciatively. "This is who he was banging? And who is she?" Emiko took a moment to look at the photo while the gears turned inside her head, before answering her own question. "Wait—don't tell me this is the lady from your missing husband case? Is this that bar we went to?"
"The very same!" cried Makoto. "And once he'd had a chance to look at the other pictures I had, the security guard was positive this was the woman he was with."
"Now—that is a really odd coincidence," Emiko said thoughtfully.
"Yeah," said Makoto. "And not only that, but I spoke to the dead man's coworkers yesterday, and they told me he hadn't been back to work since the end of November. Around that same time, he sent his girlfriend a breakup text claiming to have met someone else, and after that he suddenly stopped communicating entirely. If this isn't a case of mistaken identity, and this woman really was present for both cases, then it's too big a coincidence for me to just ignore."
"For sure," Emiko nodded, and Makoto felt a sense of relief that she wasn't the only one who felt this way.
"So I guess I want to know why exactly this was ruled a suicide. I want to be confident that that's what I'm looking at before I go bursting open closed cases. Or if there is enough justification that this is a suicide—as it may very well be—then I want to be able to confidently explain that to the mother."
Emiko blew out her cheeks, shifting her attention back to the photos. "I hear you. At first glance, it's hard for me to imagine that this is anything other than suicide, but I'll look again." Emiko picked up one of the subway photos to give it a more thorough examination before putting it down and switching to another. When she was finished further perusing the photos, she picked up the report from the medical examiner. After a couple quiet minutes to read it over, she voiced her gut reaction to its contents: "Not a lot in here about what was done in the investigation."
"I know," said Makoto, sipping her tea. "The police report is no different. It's basically, 'We talked to a guy, we took these pictures, here's what was in his pockets'… At least the autopsy specifies what they tested for, besides pointing out the manner, mechanism, and cause of death. —Ren and I thought it was funny that 'blood loss' was listed as the mechanism of death. I mean, the guy didn't have a head…"
"That is darkly humorous…" agreed Emiko. She went back to the photos, sipping her tea a bit more as she reexamined things. "'Blood loss', though…? Hmm." She bit her lip, considering.
"Yeah," said Makoto. "Is that weird?"
"Well, no, it's not weird," said Emiko. "I mean, in the case of something like a stabbing or a gunshot wound, it's the blood loss—not the hole in your body—that actually kills you. The weapon is just what caused it. For 'blood loss' to be listed as the mechanism of death is not weird… I mean, not having a fucking head might also be a thing that could constitute a mechanism of death, but no, they decided to go with 'blood loss', and… in this case… I'm not sure 'blood loss' is a great explanation for how he died…"
Makoto took a beat to process what Emiko had just said. "Wait, what? So… What is weird here? Should 'train' have been the cause, and 'decapitation'—or 'headlessness'—the mechanism?" she asked, not really comprehending if the problem was just semantic, or something else.
Emiko sighed, studying the photograph showing Kento Abe's body from a bird's eye view. She swapped photos, examining the picture that revealed the stump of neck from a closer vantage point. She glanced back and forth between the photos a couple more times before finally answering. "This blood volume doesn't seem high enough to be consistent with 'blood loss' as a mechanism of death—I would have expected more from a decapitation." Emiko made a clicking sound as she considered the closeup of the blood pools. "And something else that seems weird is this blood pattern."
"Dammit!" cried Makoto, setting her teacup down noisily onto the coffee table. "I knew something was off about that, but I couldn't pin it down! What do you see that's weird?"
"Well, it's hard to tell due to the topography of the train tracks, but I'm not seeing enough evidence of arterial blood spray."
Makoto could feel her heart pumping. "So… what are you saying, Emi?"
Emiko exhaled, slowly shaking her head as she studied the blood pattern again. "I think what I'm saying is… he was dead before he got his head chopped off…"
There was a moment of quiet as the two women just looked at each other. After a beat, Makoto finally found her voice again. "Okay… Show me exactly what you see that makes you think that."
Emiko turned toward the array of photos on the table. "Okay, so, first of all… It is hard to tell, because you can't really see from these photos what the surface of the ground is like under the pool of blood, but assuming it's relatively flat, like it is elsewhere on the tracks, and doesn't have, like, a depression in the ground that's making a big volume of blood appear smaller, then this just isn't enough blood to be consistent with what would've spurted out from a living person's neck at the moment of their death."
"Okay, good. Anything else?" said Makoto, grabbing her notebook to record Emiko's analysis.
"Yeah, look here," said Emiko, pointing to the edge of the pool of blood farthest from Kento Abe's neck. "Look at that edge. You see how smooth it is? That's what a creeping pool of blood looks like, not blood that's spurting out at velocity. At first glance, this sort of looks like it could've spurted out by virtue of the length of this blood pool, but the texture just doesn't fit with that. And another thing that's kind of weird is the way he's positioned. Like, the way his arms are sticking out makes it look like he was already limp and his arms were being used as props to keep him from falling over. I mean, is that how you'd hold yourself if you were kneeling down? I'd think my hands would be flat on the ground, right under my torso. His are out to the side and palm-up… It's weird."
Makoto picked up the photo and stared hard at what Emiko was talking about. "Oh, Emiko, I could kiss you. This is exactly what I didn't feel qualified to figure out. So, what do you think? I should go talk to the medical examiner, right? What should I ask them?"
"Well," said Emiko, picking up the autopsy report again, "I would advise that you find the M.E. who actually did the autopsy—sorry it wasn't Tae. You might have to ask at the coroner's office about who did the report. I don't see it listed anywhere here."
"Should it be?" asked Makoto.
"I'm not sure. I would have thought so, but that might be something that isn't standardized—like a city or prefectural thing. It'll be recorded somewhere, but it might not be a thing that has to go on the actual report. Regardless of who did it, the chief medical examiner will have signed off on it, so you can start with them. They probably keep a log book or something that lists who did what analyses."
"Okay, and what should I ask once I find them?"
Emiko sighed. "I'm not really sure. I mean, what's your aim, exactly? Like, you said you wanted to be sure this was suicide, right? So then maybe just asking them to explain to you why they're confident that it was his choice to kill himself in this way. I assume you don't want to just pop in and tell them the conclusions they drew in their report were wrong, right?"
"That doesn't seem like a great way to make friends, does it?"
Emiko chuckled. "According to the report, they tested everything else that might've given another explanation for how he died, and that came up empty—all his blood work was clean. And I'm guessing there was no other evidence of foul play, or they'd have mentioned it. Where are the autopsy photos?"
"What you see is everything I've got," Makoto shook her head. "What were you going to look for?"
"Well, this might just be a dead end, but this arm placement really bugs me. If there were any signs of a struggle on the body, like he was being held here or something, then that would reinforce a foul-play hypothesis. It's generally standard operating procedure, especially in suspicious deaths, for them to take naked photos of the deceased. Maybe they have some back at the medical examiner's office, so I guess that's something else to look into—examining the body for signs of a struggle."
"Hmmm, I suppose there's no chance the body would still be in the morgue…" Makoto took the last sip of her tea before moving to refill it.
"It's been, what… nine or ten days?" asked Emiko. "Yeah, no way… Hope for photos…" Emiko sighed. "Maybe you get lucky and they just didn't include them here."
"Okay…" Makoto tried to organize an action plan in her mind, "So I should start with the coroner's office and the chief medical examiner—figure out who actually examined the body. I can ask about the missing autopsy photos as my in for why I'm there…"
"Uh huh," Emiko nodded. "And it's a completely normal thing to ask, so nobody should blink. Then we can take a look at them together."
Makoto finished her notes, then looked up to smile appreciatively at her friend. "That would be awesome, thank you."
"Of course. And if they don't have any pictures, well, then that opens them up for you to begin asking your other questions."
"Other questions, yeah…" Makoto read back her list of issues to find out about. "How much blood… position of the body and arms… blood spray…" Makoto paused. "You said you thought it looked like he was dead before he ended up on the tracks… The report says he died at eleven-fifty, which would've been shortly after the mystery woman was having sex with the security guard—according to him, at least. But if he was already dead before he had his cut off, as you suggested, that would mean they have the time of death wrong, wouldn't it? Would they have just based it off of when the last train came through?"
"Let's see…" said Emiko, reexamining the autopsy report. "It says they estimated the time of death based on 'livor, rigor and algor mortis'… Not train schedules." She bit her lip. "Huh, I'm stumped. I don't know how to square what I'm seeing in these pictures with what it says in this report. According to this," she said, holding up the report, "they didn't just assume he died when the last train came—it specifically says they actually calculated it based on the state of his body."
"Which would suggest that the train is what killed him, since the clues from the body and the train schedule coincide with each other—that's what you're saying, right?" asked Makoto.
"That's what I'm saying this is saying, yes. However, that would torpedo my hypothesis about him dying before all this. From what I see in the photos, I would think this happened post-mortem—he could've died anywhere up to about six hours earlier—after that, rigor mortis would've made the body too stiff to manipulate into this awkward position."
"Or even earlier, right? Doesn't rigor mortis wear off after a while?" asked Makoto, trying to recall that part of her education.
"Yeah, about twenty-four hours after death, when it starts to dissipate as enzymes break down the actin and myosin binding sites in the muscles—and it takes even longer when it's cold. However, based on what I can see of his color—the livor mortis—I would say this was early post-mortem, not late post-mortem. He'd have also bled a lot less if he'd been dead that long before he was decapitated. I mean—he definitely looks like he bled less than what death by decapitation should have been, but not that much less."
Makoto tried to jot all that down—not because she imagined she'd need all that information when she went to see the medical examiner, but just because she found it fascinating. Besides, writing it down helped her process it all. "And the blood volume is part of what is making you think he died earlier, right?" she asked, clarifying what she was putting on paper.
"Yeah. That, and the way the blood pooled," said Emiko. "Those are the two major things that I find inconsistent with the explanation that the train dealt the killing blow. I mean, the M.E. had access to the body, I don't—it could very well be that they had clues I don't get to see that point to eleven-fifty as the time when he died, I'm just not seeing it in these photos."
Makoto put her pen down, and regarded her friend with genuine admiration. "You know, you're a natural at this… Just really god damn good. I'm sure you'll be a fabulous doctor, but seriously… You got all this from a few photos and an encyclopedic knowledge of post-mortem changes. It's incredible."
Emiko smiled modestly. "Thank you. I did put three years of my life into this stuff—plus an entire youth spent watching true crime documentaries…"
"I watched those too," said Makoto with a chuckle. "I also fancied myself a handwriting analyst when I was a kid. Whenever there were no-name papers to hand back, the teacher would give them to me and I would figure out whose they were with pretty good accuracy. I loved it—feeling like a little mini Sherlock Holmes, using my powers of deduction to figure out who the nameless papers had to belong to… It was great."
Emiko laughed. "Wow, what a dork you were."
"I've always loved solving a good mystery," said Makoto.
"That's why you were born to be a detective," said Emiko. "And why you get handed cases like this one."
Makoto shook her head with a snorted laugh. "I wasn't handed this case, remember? It was Sato's."
"Oh, right. This case was already closed, even… Oof. Your shiny new partner will probably be pissed when he finds out you went poking into his closed case, casting doubt on his work, huh?"
"Him and the precinct captain, both. None of what I've been doing lately has been good for the department's clearance rate."
"Yuck… I wish we valued accuracy as much as we do expediency."
Makoto gave a shrug, betraying her cynicism. "The truth is whatever we say it is," she said. "'Truth' that gets cases closed more quickly is preferable to 'truth' that lets them languish, incomplete."
Emiko smiled. "I can see which truth matters more to you, and that's why I respect you so much."
"Yes, well, I appreciate that. I just hope we're not the only ones who feel that way—I can't imagine how pleased they'll be with me if I bring them a 'truth' that shows they fucked up."
"Well, if they're worth their salt, then they can be persuaded that actual truth matters more than just being 'right'." Emiko gave a sideways smile. "But I'm not in charge. Good luck."
"Mmm," hummed Makoto noncommittally. "So… Any other things I should be sure to ask the medical examiner, once I find him or her?"
With a cleansing sigh, Emiko once again surveyed the information laid out before her. "Let me see your list." Makoto turned her notebook toward Emiko so she could read it, and Emiko scanned the page, nodding. "I think you've got it all. I'm still not really sure how you get around having to imply that they screwed something up with how they handled things, though. If they have pictures, and those pictures show something weird, you might be tempted to ask why they didn't mention anything about it in this report, but I wouldn't do that. Furthermore, going in and acting like CSI: Blood Spatter will probably get you a whole lot of resentment from the examiners on staff, and they won't want to work with you—you have to consider the harm that might do to your professional relationships moving forward."
Makoto scrunched up her mouth, looking tempted to interject with some defense of exactly that kind of behavior, but she bit her tongue.
Having correctly interpreted the look Makoto was giving her, Emiko answered her with a sly grin. "I know you, Makoto, and I know you've got a bit of know-it-all in you, but my advice, I think, is to go in acting like you're ignorant and just curious about all of it. You can ask to see photos, but then be like, 'I couldn't understand the report—can you tell me what these show?' or something, just so you don't come across like you're questioning their work. Maybe ask, 'Is that a natural position for someone's arms to be in?' Just don't come off like you already know the answers they're supposed to give you, like you're trying to quiz them or something."
"Let them mansplain it to me, is what you're saying?" asked Makoto sarcastically.
Emiko laughed, "Well, sort of, yeah. I mean, you're a twenty-five-year-old woman rookie detective—these are probably a bunch of crusty old men in lab coats who are used to having everyone accept without question whatever they put in their reports. They're unlikely to take you seriously, or take kindly to any questions you have that make them sound like they didn't do their jobs perfectly. Definitely don't make it obvious you're questioning the accuracy of the time of death. If you piss them off, they won't help you. That's just my opinion." Emiko poured herself a fresh cup of tea.
"No, you're probably right," said Makoto. "I appreciate your insight here. I know I probably shouldn't, but I still would've gone in and, without thinking, immediately started making everyone in there feel defensive, getting me nowhere."
Emiko smiled, a twinkle in her eye to show how proud she was to have Makoto as a friend. "Yeah, you're not very good at dumbing it down for people, or acting like a damsel in distress, are you?"
"It's dating in college all over again, isn't it?" said Makoto, her words dripping with facetious resentment.
"I guess we can't fault all those college boys for preparing us for the real world, huh?" joked Emiko.
"I suppose not," said Makoto dryly, lifting the teapot to pour herself a refill and finding it empty. She stood from the sofa and headed into the kitchen, teapot in hand. "I'm gonna get us some more tea. I can make us some snacks too and we can catch up—maybe talk about people who weren't decapitated. Did you have lunch?"
"I did, but snacks would be nice, yeah. Are we done? Let me help clean up a little," she said, surveying the cluttered coffee table. "Where can I put all these papers?"
Makoto opened a cabinet and pulled out a box of fresh tea leaves. "There's a file folder in my laptop bag where I've been keeping all the documents for these cases," she said. "Just put them in there, please."
"Okay." Seeing the laptop bag on the floor next to the sofa, Emiko reached for it and peered inside, finding the folder. She opened it and set it down, then collected all the photos and reports that they'd spent the last hour scattering all over the table, and reorganized them. She was about to set them on top of the other photos in the file when she couldn't help noticing the surveillance photos grabbed from the Nightlife's CCTV. "Are these more photos of your mystery woman?" she asked, leafing through them casually.
"Yeah, that's her," said Makoto, filling an electric kettle with water. "I wonder what it's gonna take for me to figure out who she is…"
"Mmm," hummed Emiko, glancing through the photos. When she got to the last photo in the sequence, the one of Kosuke Kobayashi and the woman walking together, heading just out of frame of the camera, something caught Emiko's eye, and her stomach dropped. "Oh my god," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Did you say something?" said Makoto, clicking the kettle on. "I couldn't hear you."
Emiko took a second to respond. "Uh—No, uh, I didn't say anything. Just clearing my throat." She glanced behind her to make sure Makoto's back was turned, and as furtively as she could, Emiko took out her cell phone and snapped a picture of the surveillance photo, hoping that it didn't come out too blurry in her haste not to be seen making copies of police evidence. She swore she would delete it as soon as she could, and forget forever that she'd ever had the thoughts that were currently swirling around inside her brain, filling every available fold in her gray matter.