“Did she have a boyfriend?” Miyazaki added.
“No,” the mother answered. “She broke up with her last boyfriend a few months ago.”
Miyazaki exchanged a look with Teruo, then added, “Was the breakup bad?”
The mother shook her head. “Fumiko said they just didn’t see eye to eye anymore.”
Teruo pulled a photograph of the jogger next and passed it to the parents. “Is this her ex-boyfriend? Or someone that you’ve seen her with?”
The parents grimaced at the picture and the husband gave it back. “We don’t know,” he said. “Fumiko didn’t bring her boyfriends home either. She had very short relationships which didn’t get to the point of introducing us.”
“Is there anyone you could think of that would want to hurt your daughter?” Teruo asked, and the mother started crying again.
“No…” she mumbled through sobs.
Teruo nodded. “Could you give us the names and phone numbers of Fumiko’s friends?”
“We can give you the names, but not the numbers,” the father said. “Fumiko kept them in her phone.”
The murderer had stolen the phone along with Fumiko’s wallet. If they went this far, then there must’ve been some important information in the phone or the intention was to slow down the investigation.
“Does she have any social media accounts?” Miyazaki asked.
“She didn’t use social media,” the mother answered, “but one of her friends had Instagram and would often post photos of Fumiko when they were out.”
Miyazaki opened up the app. “Do you know the friend’s Instagram account?”
“I think so,” she said and Miyazaki gave her his phone. After searching for a while, the mother tapped on an account. “This is the one.”
Miyazaki thanked her, left the app open, but turned off the screen.
“One last question, ma’am, sir,” Teruo said. “Where were you yesterday afternoon?”
Both stared at Teruo in surprise and the father replied, “We were here the entire day. Just the two of us.”
The parents were each other’s alibis. He didn’t think either of them were responsible, but it was still necessary to ask and he couldn’t eliminate them from the list of suspects entirely. Not until he found the missing link between Ozawa Fumiko, the jogger and the killer.
“May we check your daughter’s bedroom?” Teruo asked. “We might find something useful in there.”
The father offered to take them while the mother shut herself up in the kitchen again. He guided them toward the end of the hallway and opened the door of the last room on the left. He let them inside, then excused himself and went back down to his wife.
The room was clean and well-organized. The bed sat untouched, as Fumiko had probably left it yesterday. There was a book with a colorful cover on her nightstand. Miyazaki put on his gloves and picked it up, browsing through it.
Teruo put on his gloves too and turned to the vanity opposite the bed. There was a jewelry box on it, and a few makeup bags. He searched them one by one, but found nothing besides necklaces, bracelets, eyeliners, lipsticks and the sort.
As he checked the box and bags, his eyes darted to the mirror from time to time and he studied Miyazaki’s reflection in it. He stood with his back to Teruo, but his gaze moved along the length of the room and even up to the ceiling. Teruo wondered what could’ve caught his attention like that.
Miyazaki turned sideways, and the expression on his face was one of worry; his brows were furrowed and teeth chewed on his lower lip. A soft draft of cold air passed by and Teruo’s hand tightened on the edge of the wooden vanity. The window was closed. The door was closed. The air-con was turned off.
The source of the strange air couldn’t have been anyone else but Miyazaki—or so it seemed. As he pondered this, the waft of air began taking color, first gleaming in the faint rays of sun, then becoming full-on white tendrils of wind. They resembled a silk veil and they swayed slowly around Miyazaki’s body just like in Teruo’s dream and just like it happened twice at the crime scenes.
Teruo didn’t believe in magic or psychic abilities or whatever the hell the thing Miyazaki conjured was. But he was undeniably certain he wasn’t hallucinating. The tendrils were real and he was staring at them right now.
The wind looked harmless. It swayed and nothing more. Teruo’s wariness and slight fear became curiosity, then he dived into a full-on analysis of what sort of things Miyazaki could achieve with that wind. Since he used it during their investigations, Teruo speculated the wind aided Miyazaki in some way. Perhaps Miyazaki was searching for something.
Something Teruo couldn’t see.
CHAPTER 9