“Everyone—other than me, of course—is so stupid and foolish and oh so lovable for it, which is why I wanted to save as many people as I could,” Ranpo said as he languidly rolled his neck. “But there’s nothing I can do for people who die before I know the truth, and that includes that elderly man who was killed solely to deceive.”
“Elderly man…?” asked the officer.
“I’m talking about that poor elderly man who died at the hospital in Murakami’s place,” said Ranpo with a subtle lift of his brow. “When I was explaining how I solved the mysteries, I lied that Murakami probably switched out IDs with someone who just happened to be similarly injured like him. But wouldn’t that just be too convenient for something so important to the trick? It was unnatural. It wouldn’t make sense for someone who was elaborate and bold with his scheme to leave things to luck like that. They waited for the perfect moment to stab and kill that elderly man. Sigh… All that just to kidnap a single man?”
“Do you mean…the murder wasn’t the objective?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. This large-scale scheme was put together solely for the purpose of kidnapping that gentleman in the suit. It was one long, elaborate trap. The playwright and Murakami were being used as well. They’re nothing more than pawns, too… Now do you believe I’m a skill user?”
“I—I…”
Ranpo leaned toward the flustered officer. “So how about you just tell me where this car is really heading?”
He then brought his head to the side of the driver’s seat and whispered into the man’s ear:
“I can smell organic solvent on your clothes, Officer.”
“Why can’t you get ahold of him?!” roared Fukuzawa.
The second floor of the theater was being used as a temporary police station where they were holding a meeting.
“I told you, I wish I could, but they still haven’t arrived at the station. They should have had plenty of time to get there, though…”
Three officers were sitting in the theater’s conference room while exchanging information with their colleagues over the phone. The moment Fukuzawa heard that the playwright had been killed, he knew. The case still wasn’t over yet. If anything, this was only the beginning.
Because…
“There were two factors to this murder… You can think of it like a shrimp and a whale.”
Ranpo knew that from the very start. He knew there were two sides to this case. He figured out there was a greater, more sinister side to this other than the staged murder. The playwright was dead. This wasn’t a sham, but a real murder. Murakami had been clearly flustered ever since he heard the news. He was honestly confused and kept asking the police to explain things o
ver and over again.
Fukuzawa felt in his gut that this wasn’t an act. While he was nowhere near as talented as Ranpo when it came to observation and reasoning, Fukuzawa had sharp enough insight to see that Murakami’s fear was real. Even a famous performer like him had forgotten how to act. Regardless, the playwright’s house where he was found was rather far away from the theater, and Murakami had been under police surveillance ever since Ranpo finished his stage monologue. Timewise, it would have been physically impossible for him to go to the playwright’s house, kill him, and return to the theater before that.
Who was really the one pulling the strings?
Who was the real culprit?
According to Ranpo:
“It’d be easy to catch the shrimp…but if you want to get the whale, you’re gonna have to use the shrimp.”
He’d probably already figured out who the “whale” was. Murakami was obviously the shrimp. Ranpo implied that the shrimp was the mediocre part of this case. It made sense, though. Nobody died, and solving the case itself wasn’t that difficult, either. Even without Ranpo, Murakami wouldn’t have been able to live as a dead man and hide out for the rest of his life. The truth would have come to light.
But in the end, only half the case was solved. There was someone pulling the strings who used Murakami and the playwright for their scheme. The only person who could have answered that was dead. Now the only one who could follow the lost path to the real criminal…was Ranpo.
What if Ranpo’s sensationalized monologue onstage was all part of a bigger plan? What if his plan to catch the whale was still ongoing?
“What was the name of the police officer taking Ranpo to the station?” Fukuzawa asked.
“Jun Mitamura,” answered the detective, intimidated by Fukuzawa.
“Why can’t you reach him?”
“That’s odd… His cell phone is turned off. He isn’t answering his radio, either.”
Fukuzawa began to get impatient.