Confessions (19 page)

No, I had to get them to blame my mother. That was the only way to be sure she’d come to see me. When I’d done my deed, I needed to find a way to get the eyes of the world to turn toward her. But what did we have in common? Our genius, of course. So my crime had to somehow demonstrate the intelligence and ability I inherited from her…which meant it had to involve one of my inventions.

Should I come up with something new? Or was there something lying around that might work? Again, the answer was simple: the Shocking Coin Purse. Professor Seguchi had made the necessary connection himself at the award ceremony.

“Did your teacher help you with this?”

“No, my mother did,” I had told him.

When a murder is committed, some of the attention naturally goes to the murder weapon. Knives or bats are boring. Even the Lunacy girl’s potassium cyanide could be ordered online or stolen from school. In other words, the crime had relied on these tools without leaving room to demonstrate the murderer’s own ability.

What would they say when they found out my weapon was something I’d invented myself? Not to mention that it had won a prize at the National Middle School Science Fair, the most wholesome place imaginable. That would get them talking. The judges who had awarded the prize would have some explaining to do, and at that point Seguchi might even mention that it was my mother who had inspired my technical wizardry.

But even if that whole scenario was unlikely, I was pretty sure my father would mention my mother’s influence if he thought it would help him avoid responsibility for what I’d done. But I suppose I didn’t have to worry about all this. I could always just make the connection myself. Tell them that instead of reading me fairy tales my mother had taught me electrical engineering from the time I was small.

I could imagine the outcry that would follow my confession. But what would my mother have to say? She’d tell me she was sorry, as she had all those times before, and then hold me in her arms. I was sure of it.

So now that I’d decided on the weapon, I just needed a victim. As a middle school student in a dead-end town, I didn’t get around much. My spheres of activity were limited to: 1) home; 2) my laboratory; and 3) school. As I’ve said before, if I committed the murder at home or at my father’s shop, the blame would fall on him rather than on my mother, even if it were committed with one of my inventions. I suppose I might have chosen one of the kids who played by the river near the lab, but in fact the place had a bad reputation and kids didn’t come all that often, so it wouldn’t be possible to plan things as carefully as I’d like. That left school. Which was fine, since murders at school always seem to get a lot of coverage in the media.

So, who should it be? The truth is, I didn’t really care. I wasn’t interested in the idiots and bumpkins in my class—I hardly knew their names—and I didn’t think the media coverage would be much different whether I chose a student or a teacher. They’d go crazy for either one.

Middle school student kills teacher!

Middle school student kills classmate!

They both sounded pretty good…but also a little boring at the same time.

I was thinking about what made a person want to commit murder in the first place, what brought out the killer instinct—when I suddenly remembered the kid who sits next to me in class and scrawls “Die! Die! Die!” in his notebook. He’s a pathetic piece of work, so worthless I’d been tempted to lean over and tell him he’s the one who should die. But now it occurred to me to wonder who it was he wanted to kill. Maybe I should get him to pick my victim.

On the other hand, that wasn’t the only reason I ended up talking to him in the first place. There was another element missing in my plan: a witness. What good was the murder if no one realized I’d done it? And yet, it would look too foolish to turn myself in. I needed someone who could follow me through the plan from beginning to end and then give a full account to the police or the media.

But not just anyone would do. First of all, I had to avoid anyone with a highly developed sense of morality. I also had to avoid anyone who might let the cat out of the bag while I was walking him through the plot. And, finally, I needed someone who wasn’t categorically opposed to murder.

But there were other considerations besides. I had to avoid anyone who thought of himself as happier than me. Some kids, when they see someone worse off than they are, want to play therapist. “Why would you want to go and kill somebody? You must be unhappy about something. Why don’t you tell me all about it?” What would I do if someone started that routine with me? The whole thing is just a trick—a way for them to make themselves feel better.

Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to figure out the likely candidates. A week of observing my classmates gave me a good sense of who was who.

I had to avoid the complete idiots and the hangers-on seeking reflected glory. Then there were the idiots who had watched me decrypt their porn tapes but then went around acting like they could do it themselves. Or the would-be thugs who wanted to think of themselves as bad boys when the worst they’d ever done was visit my website and ogle the pictures of dead animals. I couldn’t have the witness claiming he was actually my accomplice.

The ideal subject was an idiot—they were all idiots—who was harboring some deep resentment but was too timid to let it out. And Naoki Shitamura fit the bill exactly.

At the beginning of February I succeeded in increasing the charge in the Shocking Coin Purse. The time had come to put my plan into action.

I had never said more than two words to Shitamura, but as soon as I tapped him on the shoulder and buttered him up a bit, he opened right up. It was really quite simple. I mentioned the porn videos to him and the deal was sealed.

But almost immediately I began to regret having chosen Shitamura as the witness. To begin with, I quickly figured out that he didn’t have somebody he wanted to kill. He was just generally unhappy, and he scribbled “Die! Die! Die!” over and over because his limited vocabulary didn’t afford him any other options to express his feelings. But beyond that he was simply depressing to be around. At school he was quiet enough, but give him an opening and he babbled on endlessly.

“Try one of these carrot cookies. Oh, I bet you’re like me…can’t stand carrots. I’m the same way. I won’t touch them except in these cookies. My mom tried all these different recipes to get me to eat carrots, but they all sucked. But then she came up with these and they’re really not bad…like I’m willing to eat them…for her sake.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. It was a bit creepy for the mother of a middle school kid to send cookies along when her son went to play at another kid’s house—which is why I hadn’t touched them in the first place—but it was even creepier for the son to take them and not be totally embarrassed. It occurred to me that I should just kill him and be done with it. I did, however, have a useful realization in the midst of all this: Human beings have a fundamental need for physical and emotional space, and the desire to extinguish another life can arise when the boundaries of that space are violated.

But just as I was beginning to think about finding another witness, Shitamura mentioned a target that had never occurred to me: Moriguchi’s little girl.

Middle school student kills teacher’s daughter right at school!

That would be a first, and the TV and newspapers would eat it up. The homeroom teacher who had abused the boy when he showed her his invention. The same teacher who had signed the application to the science fair. Her little girl. Not bad—for an idiot like Shitamura. He even provided some additional information that could be of use: He had been shopping at the mall and had seen the girl begging Moriguchi for a pouch in the shape of a rabbit…which she had refused to buy her. I decided to keep Shitamura on as witness.

He got very excited about the plan, which he thought would end with the girl getting a little shock. He even started adding details—insisting, for instance, that someone needed to scout out the scene of the crime before we got started. The more I let him rattle on, the more eager he got.

“I wonder if she’s going to cry?” he would say, with a revolting grin on his face. “What do you think? Will she?”

“I doubt it,” I told him. Because she’ll be dead. It was all I could do to keep from laughing myself sick at the sight of him making his little plans with no idea how they would end. Enjoy yourself while you can. You won’t be grinning when you see her dead on the ground in front of you. He’d go running straight home, scared out of his mind, and tell his mother. That would be perfect. Especially since I remembered having heard that she was always complaining to someone about something. Apparently she wrote to the principal at the drop of a hat about any little slight to her boy. Well, I was going to give her something much bigger to worry about.

Everything was in place.

The afternoon in question, I got a text from Shitamura saying that he had done his reconnaissance, and I headed over to the pool.

He continued his annoying monologue while we hid in the locker room and waited for the girl. He would get his mother to bake a cake so we could celebrate, he said. What I didn’t say was that I would never speak to him again once we were finished here, but the more he talked, the more I wanted to find a way to hurt him. But what could have been simpler? I just had to tell him the truth.

As I was enjoying imagining the near future, our victim arrived. She was four years old at the time, an intelligent-looking girl who bore a close resemblance to her mother. She looked warily about her but walked straight across the pool deck to the fence where the dog was waiting. Then she produced a piece of bread from under her sweatshirt and began feeding it to the dog piece by piece.

I had imagined a more pitiful child, given that she was the daughter of a single mother, but I realized immediately that I’d been wrong. Her pink sweatshirt was printed with her favorite rabbit character; her hair was neatly parted in the middle and held back on either side with bands decorated with pompoms. Her cheeks were soft and white. When she smiled at the dog, I felt as though I was looking at the fluffy rabbit thing come to life. She was obviously a well-loved child—at least to my eyes.

It’s embarrassing to admit it, but at that moment I envied my victim. A little girl who should have been nothing more than a necessary piece—an object—in my plan.

But I managed to shrug off this humiliation and go out to meet her. Shitamura followed and then pushed past me.

“
Hi,”
he said as we got close to her. “You’re Manami, aren’t you? We’re in your mother’s class. You remember, I saw you the other day at Happy Town.”

He’d jumped in and gotten things started. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought he’d be any good at this stage of the game, but he actually was the first to speak up. He’d even thought up his line, and since his only real strength was his ability to seem friendly, this should have been a decent plan, but in the end it proved to be a disaster.

When he spoke to the girl, he sounded exactly like the third-rate MC they hired once a year for the block party in our neighborhood. He might have pulled it off if he’d used his normal voice, but instead he sounded like somebody pretending to be the nice boy from next door. The girl was eyeing him suspiciously now, and I knew I would have to do something or the whole plan would be ruined.

It was my turn to speak up. Shitamura could just watch from here on.

I asked her about the dog, and she got a big smile on her face. Humans truly are simple creatures. Then I watched for an opening and produced the pouch.

“It’s a little early, but it’s a Valentine’s present from your mother.” I hung it around her neck.

“From Momma?” she said, and I could see that she had the smile of someone who had been well loved—the smile I had lost forever.

That’s when I realized I wanted her to die. I wanted to escape this humiliation, and the murder that would allow me to do it seemed even more precious. My plan suddenly appeared utterly perfect.

“Go ahead and open it,” I told her. “There’s chocolate inside.” There was a look of complete trust in her eyes as she took hold of the zipper.

There was a quiet popping sound, her body twitched violently, and she fell over on her back. After that she lay perfectly still, with her eyes closed.

It had all happened so quickly that my bubble had no time to pop.

She was dead! My plan was a success. My mother would come now. She would take me in her arms and apologize for all the pain she’d caused me, and we’d never have to be apart again.

I was on the verge of tears, but Shitamura brought me back to reality. He was clinging to me and his body was trembling—which was totally disgusting.

“Go ahead, tell everybody all about it.” Once I’d told him the most important thing, I shook him off and turned to leave.

I have nothing more to say to you, but your part begins now. This is the only reason I spoke to an idiot like you in the first place, why I took you to my laboratory and
let you leave your nasty cookie crumbs all over.

But then I turned around. Shitamura was still standing there, a stunned look on his face.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t worry about them thinking you had anything to do with this. We’ve never been friends. I can’t stand kids like you anyway—completely worthless but full of yourself. Compared to a genius like me, you’re pretty much a complete failure.”

How well put! There was something refreshing about finally telling the truth. I turned again, and this time I left the pool without looking back and went straight to the laboratory. Everything had gone according to plan.

I spent the night at the lab waiting for my phone to ring or to hear the police on the intercom, but at dawn the next day nothing had happened. Apparently Shitamura hadn’t gone sniveling to his mother yet—hardly surprising, as he was slow at everything. But they must have found the body by now.

There was nothing on the TV or the Internet, so I decided to go by the house on the way to school to read the morning paper. I had stopped eating breakfast there long ago, but Miyuki said I should at least have a glass of milk. I drank it down and then spread the newspaper on the dining room table. On any other morning I would have started with the front-page headlines, but this morning I went straight to the local news.