The woman’s face turned crimson and she covered it with the back of her hand. Her partner looked from Teruo to her and then back to Teruo, mumbling something incoherent.
“Could you please repeat that?” Miyazaki asked.
The man hesitated before answering a bit louder. “We stopped to… have… uh… I mean to make out here.”
“In the bushes?” Miyazaki insisted and Teruo gave him a discreet nudge.
The woman looked like she was about to faint of embarrassment. Clearly “make out” was the man’s tame way of saying they were intending to do something more intimate. Teruo shivered just thinking of having sex outside in November.
Teruo cut this part short. “What happened next?”
“Well,” the man continued, “we saw a pile of leaves, and the legs and arms were sticking out.” He took a breath. “We, actually, I am the one who checked him. I pulled a few leaves away and saw the… uh… neck. I called the police immediately.”
“Did anyone else see the victim before the police arrived?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious around, perhaps watching you? Someone who looked interested in what you were doing?”
The man frowned. “I don’t think so, no. But we were too shocked to notice anyone.”
“Do people often come here,” Miyazaki interjected, “for various activities?”
“I don’t know.” The man shrugged. “In spring and summer this area is full of people, but right now with the rain and all, we’re probably the only ones...” He turned a shade of red as he said that.
“Do you recognize the victim?” Teruo asked.
Both shook their heads and Teruo thanked them for their time.
“We’ll have to take your running shoes into evidence,” Teruo said. “You walked over the scene and we need to compare them with the other footprints forensics will pull out.”
Neither of them looked happy about it but they nodded.
Teruo turned to the first officer. “Get one of your staff to give them some other shoes and then send them home. Email me everything as soon as possible.” He offered back the clipboard, then glanced at Miyazaki who was vigorously scribbling in his notepad. “Let’s check the victim.”
“Yes, sir,” Miyazaki said and followed.
Teruo walked to one of the forensics. “Can we come closer?”
“Only up to here,” the forensic replied, making a line in the air with her finger close to the victim’s body.
Teruo thanked her, then added, “Where’s Suzuki?”
“Had something to wrap up at the medical center. She’ll arrive shortly.”
Suzuki, the medical examiner, was one of the reasons behind the arguments with the Superintendent and the forensic medical center the TMPD worked with. Teruo always insisted they send Suzuki whenever he got a case. She was the best and they worked well together—which translated into Suzuki tolerating Teruo’s outrageous requests of putting a priority on his cases above all others.
“Let’s see what we have here,” Teruo said, squatting near the victim.
The victim appeared to have been a frequent jogger. He wore loose running pants, a T-shirt, an unzipped jacket—which seemed to have been dragged away from his neck in order to expose it—and running shoes, worn out and slightly discolored with age.
His neck was covered in dried, dark blood which had seeped into his blue T-shirt and poured down onto the grass underneath. Couldn’t have been dead for more than a day. A thin aluminum wire circled the neck three times—Teruo counted roughly—cutting deep into the victim’s throat and ending in a carefully twisted knot at the front, with a simple, silver, round pet tag attached to it. At first glance, it appeared the wire was the murder weapon, but something didn’t sit right with Teruo.
“This is quite peculiar,” Miyazaki said from above him.
Teruo nodded. “Why wrap it three times? Too much unnecessary effort to kill.”
Miyazaki squatted and pulled out his phone, turning on the camera and zooming in on the victim’s neck. It had high resolution and they could see details without the need to touch the body before Suzuki’s arrival. He found Miyazaki’s approach interesting.