“Nonsense. I do not know the man. Why would I kill him?”
“To frame Aoki for his murder.” Cora smiled. “You stole the sword from Dennis Pride. You got Aoki’s fingerprints on it by leaning it up against the door of his car. He had to move it to get in. Which was all you needed. You retrieved the sword, stashed it in the trunk of your car. When Dennis followed Aoki and Reiko, you tagged along behind. All you had to do was wait until Dennis followed them home, then kill him with the sword. The inference would be obvious. Aoki caught Dennis following him, and killed him.
“Why didn’t that happen? Because Dennis was so drunk, he pulled off the side of the road and went to sleep. Thereby saving his life.
“So you killed the detective instead.”
Hideki smiled sarcastically. “What detective? That is what I would like to know. Yes, I know there is a detective, and I know that he is dead. What I do not know is why he was killed.”
“He was killed to frame you. So the sudoku and the crossword puzzle could be left on the body to frame you for the crime.” Cora spread her arms, smiled at the judge, and the courtroom, and the TV camera. “Which was really the
frame of the frame
. You framed yourself, to make it look like Aoki was framing you.”
“That is ridiculous!”
“Actually, it’s rather clever. You can console yourself with that while you’re in jail.”
Judge Hobbs leaned forward on the bench. “Miss Felton, can you prove this?”
“Absolutely, Your Honor.” Cora turned back to Hideki. “I have an eyewitness.”
“Impossible! I did not do it!”
“You did, and I can prove it. I know exactly what happened. It was easy. All you had to do was surprise the detective on stakeout, stab him with the samurai sword, run the body out to the Tastee Freez, and set up a scene that would resemble the first murder. You’d leave a crossword puzzle and a sudoku that implicated you, and it would look like Aoki was trying to frame you for the crime.
“What you didn’t plan on was Dennis Pride waking up.”
Consternation showed on Hideki’s face.
“See, Dennis was the joker in the deck. When Aoki left the Country Kitchen, Dennis tagged along. So did the detective. Dennis was pretty drunk. He passed out in his car. He thought he had a nightmare, the vision he had of an Asian man killing a Caucasian. It’s only lately he’s come to realize this was not a drunken hallucination, but something he’d actually seen.” Cora smiled. “You see why it’s so important the restraining order be lifted? Dennis Pride will be the
chief witness against you. To the fact that you killed the detective and framed yourself with cryptic puzzles to make it look like your rival was framing you. It might have worked, except for one thing. The eyewitness. Dennis saw you do it.”
“That is a lie!” Hideki snarled. His lip curled back, stretching his scar. “He was dead drunk! He did not see a thing!”
A hush fell over the courtroom.
Cora smiled. “No, but you did. Didn’t you, Hideki?
You’re
the eyewitness. You saw Dennis passed out in his car. You just said so.
He was dead drunk and didn’t see a thing
. And you’re absolutely right. Dennis didn’t see
you
at the scene of the crime. You saw
him. You’re
the eyewitness who places you there.”
Hideki blinked, as the realization hit him. He sat in stunned silence, overwhelmed, unable to think of a single thing to say.
Cora spread her arms, and curtsied to the judge.
“I rest my case.”
Chief Harper frowned at the gathering in his office. “What are Sherry and Aaron doing here? Not that I don’t like you kids, but we have business.”
“So do we, Chief,” Cora said. “And I’d like to get it taken care of before anything else pops up. Aaron has a confession to make. You and Sherry need to hear it. I’m not sure anyone else does. It looks like you got Hideki dead to rights. But if he hires a good defense attorney …”
“Becky’s not representing him?”
“Just until another attorney can be found. She’s recusing herself on the grounds that she helped trap him.”
“Becky was in on it?”
“Did I say that, Chief? Becky’s actions, however innocent, may have inadvertently led to his arrest. There’s a fine line here, Chief. She wasn’t his attorney at the time. She had been his attorney. Then she got him out of jail. When he no longer needed her services, she
contracted them to Aoki. In the course of defending Mr. Yoshiaki, it came to pass that—”
Harper put up his hands. “Save it for the judge. I just asked if she was defending him. If he gets outside counsel, it’s all well and good. Now, what is it you’re hoping won’t have to come out?”
“I hired the detective,” Aaron said.
Harper’s eyes narrowed. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, he did it, the big lug,” Sherry said. “Isn’t that the stupidest thing you ever heard?”
“You can fight it out later, kids,” Cora said. “Right now, let’s move things along. Aaron hired the detective to keep an eye on Dennis. Dennis was hanging around, getting drunk, spying on Sherry, and smashing his headlight.”
“Headlight?”
“Aaron thinks Dennis broke his headlight. He was going to report it, but Sherry and I talked him out of it. Actually, we got distracted by Hideki and Aoki performing the Japanese version of
High Noon.”
“You mentioned moving things along,” Harper pointed out.
“Right. Aaron couldn’t keep tabs on Dennis because he has a job. The dead PI gave him the idea. He could hire a guy to watch him.”
“Indefinitely?” Chief Harper said skeptically.
“Exactly,” Sherry said. “See how stupid?”
“Not indefinitely,” Aaron said. “Until he violated probation and went to jail.”
“Stick with me here,” Cora said. “Never mind if it was a smart move, the fact is he did it. Tuesday afternoon, Aaron spotted Dennis’s car in front of the Country Kitchen. He wasn’t about to confront him. He’d taken enough lumps for that. He went back to the paper, called a PI. Lester Mathews. Asked him to follow the guy.
“Well, Mathews doesn’t know Aaron Grant from Adam—Aaron picked the PI’s name out of a phone book—and the guy’s not going to drive all the way to Bakerhaven on Aaron’s say-so. He wants cash. Aaron won’t give him a credit card number—Aaron doesn’t want
any record of the transaction—so he has to hire him in person. He rushes to the PI’s office, gives him two hundred dollars. And, because Aaron doesn’t want to leave his card, what does he leave instead?”
“The
Bakerhaven Gazette
?”
“Hot off the press. With the paper’s phone number, and his byline. Wednesday’s paper, which he got Tuesday night. Accounting for how it got in the dead man’s safe.”
“Why is it open to the crossword puzzle?”
“My picture. Aaron’s got photos of Sherry, but he doesn’t carry one of me. He wants the guy to know who we are, in case Dennis bumps into us.”
“You’re talking about me as if I weren’t here,” Aaron said.
“Believe me, it’s for your own good. Anyway, Aaron leads the PI back to the Country Kitchen and points out Dennis to him. Not realizing he was sending the guy to his death.”
“Hey. I feel bad enough already.”
“I’m sure you do. I just want to rub it in, in case this is the only time you get blamed for it. How about it, Chief? Can we leave this alleged hiring alone until someone raises the issue?”
“Why cover it up?”
“Oh. Bad choice of language. We’re not covering anything up. We’re simply not volunteering extraneous information that has nothing to do with the price of beans. Why? Because the ex-husband from hell will file it away under
P
for persecuted,
and it will be tough to argue with, since it actually happened.”
Harper frowned.
“Believe me, you do not want to give that son of a bitch cause to play the martyr.” Cora smiled. “On the bright side, I never did get that restraining order lifted, so you got every right in the world to kick him out of town.”
Harper said, “Do you realize what you’re asking?”
“I’m not asking anything. I’m in here giving you a hypothetical situation. In the event that Aaron Grant had done so-and-so, would it be possible for you to do such-and-such?”
“I don’t recall you saying this was hypothetical.”
“I’m sure I did. Anyway, being a nice guy and all, if you do choose such-and-such, you’d surely give Aaron a heads-up so he knows how to handle himself and what to put in the paper.” Cora waved her hands. “Come on, kids. No more stalling. Go see the Reverend Kimble and set a date.”
After Sherry and Aaron left, Chief Harper said, “He really did that?”
“Damn right. And I’m glad of it. It was the missing piece in the puzzle. Remember the problem I had? If Aoki hired the first detective, I couldn’t see him hiring the second? On the other hand, I couldn’t see Hideki hiring the detective just to set up the pseudoframe? Well, throw Aaron Grant into the equation, and the whole thing is simple. Aoki hired a detective to keep an eye on Hideki. Hideki doesn’t take kindly to being followed, and caves the detective’s head in. An impulsive act, of the type Hideki’s been committing. This time he goes too far. Winds up with a one-eyed gumshoe and a bloody mess.
“Oops.
“What is he to do? If the cops start snooping around, find out the detective was hired to follow him, he’s not just the number-one suspect, he’s bought a first-class ticket up the river.
“He’d love to ditch the body, but he’s not too keen on driving around with a corpse in the car. But the body’s not
in
the car. So what if he doesn’t ditch the body, what if he just ditches the car? If he gets rid of the car it will look like the body was brought here and dumped.
“So he throws the ax in the trunk of the car, and the bloody eye on the floor of the backseat.”
“Why?” Harper asked.
“He doesn’t want to leave the murder weapon with the body, or it will look like a crime scene, instead of a place it was dumped. Same thing with the eye. It’s lying next to the corpse, screaming, ‘Look, look, someone whacked me on the head right here!’ He throws it in
the car, and hides the car in the woods. Far enough so it won’t be found for a while, but close enough for him to walk back.
“Anyway, ditching the car is such a good strategy the case makes barely a ripple in Bakerhaven. Aoki doesn’t even hear about it. When he takes Sherry out and signs her to a contract, he thinks the PI’s still working for him.
“By the time Aoki finds out the PI’s been murdered, he’s sure Hideki did it, but there’s nothing he can do. He can’t accuse Hideki without admitting he hired the PI. Which he absolutely will not. It wouldn’t be honorable. It would be admitting he didn’t trust his wife. Even after he’s arrested for murder, Aoki won’t admit to hiring the PI, even to his lawyer.
“Anyway, after he kills the PI, Hideki is upset. Not in the normal way, because Hideki’s not a normal person. He’s upset that Aoki won’t get blamed for it. Aoki hired the detective. There ought to be some way to connect him to the crime. If he’d only been prepared to do it.
“Hideki’s no slow learner. Next time he
will
be prepared. Aaron’s account of the crime mentions the victim had a crossword puzzle and a sudoku in his pocket. They don’t mean anything, they’re just puzzles in the paper, but they give Hideki the idea. So he creates a sudoku and a crossword puzzle that, taken together, yield his Social Security number. He goads Aoki in the street to make a crack about his birthright, establishing Aoki knows he’s a U.S. citizen, and laying the groundwork for setting Aoki up for the frame. He steals a samurai sword, leans it against the door of Aoki’s car, to get his fingerprints on it. He retrieves the sword, waits for his chance.
“It doesn’t take long. That night, he, Aoki, and Reiko have a huge dustup in the bar, witnessed by everyone, during which Dennis staggers up to Aoki and accuses him of making a play for Sherry.
“Which couldn’t be better. When Dennis follows them out to the parking lot, the stage is set. Dennis will follow Aoki. Hideki will kill Dennis with the samurai sword with Aoki’s fingerprints on it. Dennis is the guy who had the sword in the first place. The inference will
be clear. Dennis stole the sword, and Aoki took it away from him and killed him with it.
“Why doesn’t he?
“The outside event.
“The private detective Aaron hired to keep tabs on Dennis.
“There’s no way Hideki knows that. When Dennis takes off after Aoki, and the detective takes off after him, Hideki is baffled. He thinks the detective is following Aoki. Why, he has no idea. Most likely he figures the guy was hired to follow
him
and couldn’t tell one Asian from another.
“What happens? Dennis pulls off the road, passes out. The private eye pulls off the road too. Hideki can’t kill Dennis with a witness. No matter. He kills the private eye.”
“In front of Dennis?” Harper said.
“Why not? Dennis was passed out. If he saw anything, he’d think it was a traumatic, repressed nightmare. Hideki sneaks up behind the private eye, stabs him in the heart.
“Now, Hideki has a logistics problem. He has a killer, a corpse, and a guy passed out. He also has three cars. How to set the scene so it looks like Aoki did it?
“He puts the detective in his car—”
“Whose car?”
“The detective’s car. He drives him to the Tastee Freez, dumps the body out back, and leaves the car out front. He puts the puzzle and the sudoku on the sword, sticks it back in the wound, wraps the guy’s fingers around it, and walks the half a mile to where he’s left his car.
“The stage is set to frame Aoki. There’s only one problem. Since the sword is the one Dennis stole from the antique shop, and since Dennis is still alive, he has to be very careful the police don’t think Dennis did it.
“How does he do that? Easy. He opens the door of Dennis’s car and smears blood on his hands.
Without
blood on his hands, Dennis could have committed the crime,
not
gotten bloody, driven away,
and passed out. But there’s no way he committed the crime, got bloody, then drove the car half a mile without messing it up. Blood on Dennis, but none on the steering wheel, is proof conclusive he didn’t do it.
“Which is exactly what Hideki wants.
“It also serves another purpose. Hideki wants to frame Aoki by making it look like Aoki framed him. How was Aoki framing him? By leaving his Social Security number. But Aoki can’t possibly believe that won’t be seen through as a hollow sham. Because why would Hideki leave his own number?
“So, here we get into triple-think. It will look like Aoki also framed Dennis, in an obvious way that’s easily seen through, to mask the actual frame he was making on Hideki.”
“I’m getting a terrible headache,” Harper said. “How the hell am I going to prove any of that?”
“You don’t need to. That’s the beauty of it. Hideki slipped up in court. His ass is grass. These are arguments his lawyer will have to deal with.”
“Whoever that poor fellow is,” Harper said, “I don’t envy him his job.”
“Never mind the permutations and convolutions of this plot. The bottom line is Hideki killed the guy, and Hideki put the sudoku and the crossword on the samurai sword.”
“That’s right,” Harper said. “No one else put them there.”
Cora frowned. “Why do you say that?”
Chief Harper tipped back in his desk chair, scratched his head. “The day of the murder, you left your purse in my office.”
“Yeah. I guess I was excited.”
“I guess you were. But not so excited you couldn’t solve the puzzle once I faxed it to you.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Nothing,” Harper said. “It’s just things get left in my office all the time. When that happens, you have to identify them, call the person who left them, ask them to pick ’em up.”
“Which you did.”
“Yeah,” Harper said. “Which I did. And now you tell me this story about cars, and swords, and puzzles. And it’s so complicated. Requires so much expertise.”
“Please. You’re giving me a swelled head.”
“It also puzzling. I hate to use that word. But it’s hard to figure out. And I have to wonder.”
Chief Harper picked up a stapler from his desk. Seemed to find it fascinating. Fiddled with it while he spoke. “Just for the sake of argument, suppose I looked in your purse, to see whose it was, and found a puzzle. And suppose it happened to be the same one found on the body. Except it was already solved. That would be rather strange, wouldn’t it?”