Chapter 47

“-Chad, talk to me. You really did it alone?”

“He won’t give me the wings.”

“Chad, did someone tell you to kill these people?”

“He won’t give me the wings.”

“Do you remember who gave you the drug?”

“He won’t give me the wings.”

Tim sighed briefly. Jude, who was drooping in a lazy position next to him, looked into the pale green blank eyes and said callously.

“Rationalize it, why he won’t give you wings. It’s your specialty.”

“I did everything he told me to do. The angel, to me…”

“Oh, yeah, but what we’re curious about is, was there anyone you saw before you saw the angel? The person who was with the angel when he appeared. Not an angel but a person. It’s better if you remember the body features.”

“Name, say, no, he didn’t, my friend, I don’t know his name, he was my friend…”

Tim’s body leans forward hastily.

“Friend? So about him…”

“Hey, Tim. Can you go out and get me some coffee?”

Rubbing his eyes once, the languid words hardened Tim’s face. He looked deeply suspicious, and his voice was low and worrisome.

“Jude, don’t tell me you’re …”

“What are you thinking? It’s past lunch, and I’m sleepy. Food coma.”

“……okay.”

He grinned at Tim rising in an unwilling motion, and Jude turned to Chad at the same time as the door closed. Chad’s face turned a little pale.

“Why, why, why, why?”

“Why are you stuttering? Do you have something pricked on you?”

“You, you, you’re scary.”

“Huh? What are you talking about? What did I do?”

“It’s, it’s, it’s similar to human eyes. No, it’s not. You, I, I don’t smell…”

Shaking to his jaw, Chad draws his back as if he was trying to run away from Jude. As he stared at the movement, Jude burst out laughing.

“What the hell. When I first saw you, you were good at talking.”

“Back then, I, I didn’t know, but today, when you caught me, that face…”

“Oh -that’s because you were trying to hurt my partner!”

“No, it’s, it’s, it’s different. You’re not angry, you’re not angry, you’re a little bit more …”

Having said that, Chad shut up. Looking at the carefully peering eyes, it was clear that he was firmly frightened. He didn’t mean to soothe him, and Jude looked at him quietly and slowly pulled the chair toward his seat. As he leaned over the desk, he noticed Chad’s shoulder flinching. With a face that had nothing in mind, Jude asked slowly.

“Okay, if you’re scared, just stay scared. Instead, you’ll have to give me an answer.”

“An, answer…?

“Your friend. Who is it? You say you don’t even know his name, but at least you know who he is.”

“Oh, no, the angel said I shouldn’t sell my friends out! Then he told me that I would never have a chance and that I would fall into hell rather than being an angel! No, I can’t.”

“The angel? It’s a fake.”

“……what?”

The light-colored eyes are wide open. Glancing at the handcuffs tied to Chad’s hands, Jude spat out without hesitation at his blank face. He had a tone of striking a bug that didn’t even need to be killed.

“Your friend deceived you. He gave you drugs, covered his face, pretended to be an angel, and he brainwashed you when you were high with drugs. Since you’d been suffering from schizophrenia, depression and megalomaniac, it wouldn’t have been difficult. When you talked about the angel’s voice to your friend, rationally he would have said it was ridiculous, but if it was true, he would have said he wanted someone dead. He should be pretending to be an angel. To obey your friend’s words, and kill those people, you’ve been foolish enough to do that.”

“Oh, no… the angel was real……… to me, to give me a chance……”

“Ah, it’s fake. So if you’re caught, he ordered you to kill yourself. And if that angel is real, why won’t he give you the wings?”

“No, no, no, no, nooooo!”

As the scream turns to whimper – he probably bit his tongue, and Jude became worried for a moment – Chad buried his face between his arms and fell face down as if he was hitting the table. His shoulders trembled irregularly. A sound like sobbing and crying came out alternately. All right, this is enough. Tim wouldn’t like seeing this very much. Watching the scene curiously calm, Jude spoke to the miserable Chad in an unchanging voice.

“So tell me, Chad Lockman. We’ll find that twisted friend of yours and make him pay for his sin. You were just a victim, weren’t you? We have to prove it.”

“I’m… I’m just a victim…”

In a distorted voice, Chad recited after Jude. The hallmark of a human being – with a light, dreary sigh, Jude sat cross-legged – if you think there is no harm to yourself, or if you judge that it is time to minimize the most damage, you will open your mouth. Not just Chad, but the gentleman in the good suit, the homeless on the streets, they’re all the same. He was used to it, but it wasn’t fun.

He’s not having fun?

Surprised by his thoughts, Jude relaxed his crossed legs. What do you mean fun? You’ve never valued interest in dealing with cases. Case is case, work is work. It was just that. Have you been adversely affected by the guy you’ve been in contact with lately? – He shook his head a couple of times and turned his attention back to the man in front of him. Looking like a deflated balloon, he slowly raised his head. There was a tinge that resembled madness in his voice.

“……his name, I don’t know…”

“That’s enough; just tell me where you met him. Like what he looks like.”

“I, I didn’t have medicine, so it was hard, I had no money, and I was sick.”

As Chad began to open his mouth with difficulty, the door of the interrogation room opened gently. Tim, holding two coffee cups in both hands, quietly sat next to Jude. Asking with his eyes to his partner what happened, Jude nodded vaguely and pointed at Chad with his chin. Chad continued, moving his hands together, making his fingernails bump into each other.

“Then, I met him. He gave me medicine, he talked to me…”

“That friend, where did you meet? Where did you see him?”

“I, I met him at a bar. The bar I met with you at the time. He’s a worker…..”

Chad began to stutter to explain his appearance. Hair colour, eye colour, physique, voice, and age. A strange light came to Tim and Jude’s face as they listened to it one by one. Tim, who turned his head in shock, saw his partner’s shrugging face and confirmed that they were right. The impression was concise.

“No way.”

* * *

Bam, the sound of the bar door opening was not friendly. The bartender, who was checking the label of the bottle behind the bar table, looked at Tim and Jude with puzzled eyes. At the bar the first day he met Chad, the bartender, who told him not to mind what Chad said, came out of the back of the bar table with a slightly surprised face and stood in front of Tim and Jude. It was not time for dinner yet, and the bar was literally quiet. Only the sound of the baseball game broadcast on TV was echoing inside quietly.

“What brings you here? I’m sure you’re not done with work yet.”

“Larry Rushville?”

When Tim called his name in a stiff voice, he frowned suspiciously as if he knew something was going on. Larry’s face quickly caught a nasty light when he saw Jude shake the handcuffs out of his pocket. Tim’s voice was still tense.

“You’re under arrest for instigating the murder of Laura Brunner and Noah Barton.”

“What…! What are you guys, you can’t – let go of me!”

Reaching out his sturdy arm trying to push Jude out of the way, the blond detective pressed him on the table with a deft movement. Jude grinned and spat out into his ears, who were groaning in pain.

“Hi, angel?”

“-So what are you doing now, you caught me after hearing from that psycho?”

Toward Larry throwing up his cynicism, Jude answered to him half-heartedly.

“Why, I heard you’re Chad’s friend.”

“Ha, friend? Don’t be ridiculous. Who’s making friends with such a lunatic? I’ve never met him except when I saw him briefly at the bar!”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a friend or anything. But it’s important that the dead were all connected to you. The first woman to die is your ex-wife who used alimony to bother you, and the second man who died was a man who fought quite hard with you. I don’t believe in exquisite coincidences.”

“What does it have to do with me? Do you have any evidence except that you’re suspicious? Do you think the jury will find me guilty only based on such uncertain assumptions?”

“There’s one more thing. The caretaker there remembered you and Chad going in and out of that super old apartment. He thought you were gay.”

“What? That’s ridiculous! No one…”

Larry, who was shouting reflexively, shut his mouth. A smile came to Jude’s face.

“Yeah, you thought nobody was there, didn’t you? He was repairing his car close by. You shouldn’t have thought the caretaker would be far away because the management office is empty.”

“Larry.”

To Larry, who was more relaxed, Tim came closer. Looking straight at his rather grimly stiff face, Tim slowly spat it out.

“We’ve already gathered the evidence we need. You and Chad were in contact. You talked about them at the bar as well as at Chad’s house, right? I’ve heard from regular customers that they’ve seen you speak ill of your ex-wife to Chad.”

“Well, so what? Because I tell a little gossip about my divorced wife and went in and out of Chad’s house after, you think that’s why he killed those two? What kind of nonsense is that?”

“Well? It doesn’t sound so ridiculous to me. You were the only person Chad had contact with. Unless the drugs fall from the sky, it means that you were the one who supplied it. And even if you’ve done a great deal of favour to him, assuming Chad’s delusion of angelism was purely his own, the reason is obvious if the people he killed were people who had ties to you. You told him. Even their names and addresses. In the second case, I believe you were involved in the execution. Larry, think about it, it’s an obvious logical structure. Two people go into the same room and one person gets stabbed to death and the other leaves the room, it is natural that the person who leaves is the culprit. It’s as obvious as that.”

“…I…”

As if to gauge the situation, Larry licked his lips with a light, rough breath, and he began to speak in a more pliant tone as he began to alternate between Tim and Jude.

“Okay, I’ll admit it. I sometimes gave Chad some drugs. It’s true that I told him a little bit about myself. But I swear I didn’t tell him to kill them. It’s just that Chad interpreted it however he wanted, okay? I never told him to kill them! I’m just cursing, that’s what everybody does!”

“What Chad said was different. You were the only one who could be next to him while he was taking medicine. And more likely, the second case. Noah is a burly man, and dwarf Chad can’t afford to move him alone and kill him. If there’s no one to help.”

“What, what, what is it now? Now you’re saying I’m even involved in the murder? Don’t be ridiculous! There’s no evidence other than circumstantial evidence…”

“Chad’s testimony. He killed him under the influence of drugs, but he clearly remembered your help in the process. ‘My friend helped me. Larry, Larry.’ I think he said something like that.”

“Do you think the testimony of a drug addict and megalomaniac is so convincing? Chad was on drugs. Who knows if he had an illusion or something? Who knows if he’s intoxicated and that he’s more violent than usual? Even if my fingerprints were found on the scene…”

“We found it.”

It was Jude’s voice that snapped Larry’s self-defensive smile. Tim looked back at Jude with a surprised face, but Jude continued dryly without looking back at Tim.

“We found it, your fingerprint. I wasn’t going to tell you this if you admit it earlier, but there’s nothing much to do with you being so uncooperative. We found your fingerprints.”

“Hey, that’s ridiculous! It can’t be….”

“Why, did you work with gloves on? You thought we wouldn’t find it if you threw it in the bin? The police, we have a professional psyche where digging through the trash doesn’t bother us. We found a glove with your fingerprints on it, a glove with Noah Barton’s blood on it. Oh – you have no idea how hard it was.”

“Th, that, that…”

His face continued to turn white and blue. Tim, who was looking at Jude with a surprised look for a moment, quickly settled down and headed for Larry. As he looked down at the desk, stared earnestly at the door of the interrogation room, and shook his head several times with a vain smile, Larry glanced at Jude with his gradually disappearing smile. Toward Jude’s smiling face, Larry chewed his lips and spat as he grinds his teeth.

“Call me a lawyer, now.”

“Do you think your situation will get better when a lawyer comes? Hey, Larry, let’s not do this. I’m suggesting the best way I’ve known so far. There’s no way out. The best thing you can do now is for you to just admit it. Murder by grudges, that’s not a bizarre story, is it? The jury isn’t going to be that harsh. If you keep behaving like this, will you go out to court and give a friendly testimony? How much more do you want to struggle?”

“Larry, it’s not going to do you any good to hang in there. Tell me what happened. I’ll admit it, that it’s a grudge. I’ve seen it a lot, and it’s not uncommon. It’s best to tell us everything now. For your sake.”

Larry’s eyes shook nervously. He took a few deep breaths to control his shortness of breath, and then Larry bit his lips. Larry, who repeatedly touched his forehead several times and put it down, gave up and let out a low, slightly distorted voice.

“……I didn’t really mean it. I really didn’t know Chad would kill him. I was just messing with him, but I didn’t think he’d take it seriously. Noah’s part, yes, I did help. I helped, but I didn’t mean it from the beginning. Chad said he was going to kill Noah first, and something got through my head…”

“-Why did you do such a dangerous thing?”

As soon as he left the interrogation room, Tim said in a light rebuke. Shrugging his shoulders, Jude smirked.

“Why, it worked.”

“Bloody gloves, I’ve never even seen them. What would you do if it didn’t work?”

“Well, looking at it, it looks like he really was there. That’s it. Actually, I wasn’t sure either, but we didn’t even find any fragments of Larry’s fingerprints at the scene. I wondered if it would be possible for a person with such a strong temper to thoroughly wipe all his fingerprints. The result is lucky.”

“Knowing the truth is great too.”

“Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? We only had circumstantial evidence anyway, and no matter how plausible the story is, we can’t convince the jury if there’s no evidence. The only thing I could squeeze out right now was a confession, and I had nothing to lose. Would it be worth a compliment if I said I did well?”

Looking at Jude’s smiling face with both hands shamelessly raised, Tim stopped laughing. He doesn’t like the method a little, but somehow it was a big harvest to get a confession that Larry was involved.

“Yes, good job.”

“For your hard work–.”

“–What do you want to eat?”

“Oh, as expected of Tim. You’re so good to me.”

Giggling at each other, Tim and Jude headed to a nearby sandwich shop. It was already evening and the sky was dark. “We’re working overtime like this, aren’t they giving us a medal or something?” – Jude shudder once in the cool weather and whined.

“-So we just have to look for those bloody gloves, right?”

“I’ve been in touch with them, so the next shift will take care of it for now. We worked too much today.”

Complaining, Jude took a bite of the sandwich. Laughing in sympathy at his partner’s words, Tim put down a glass of juice that he was drinking feeling the vibrations in his pocket. It was the voice of the rookie police officer who searched for Chad’s fingerprints that burst out of his phone in a hurry.

[-We’re in trouble! Oh, man, I know you’re already off work, but I thought I’d let you know.]

“Wait, wait. What happened?”

[Chad Lockman, Chad Lockman… is dead!]

Holding the sandwich, Tim froze for a moment. To Jude, who asked what was going on with his eyes, Tim managed to answer, “Chad is… dead,” and Jude’s eyes grew round. After a moment of confusion, Tim shook his head and asked the voice over his cell phone.

“What the hell happened? How?”

[It was suicide. It’s not just that, it’s… ]

“Not only that, what else?”

[That….that, before he killed himself, he killed Larry Rushville…]

Tim’s head, for a moment, was really dizzy. Putting down the sandwich as if throwing it, Tim shouted roughly at his cell phone.

“What do you mean?! He killed Larry Rushville and then killed himself? How is that possible?!”

[Well, you know, Chad Lockman, he kept asking me to let him meet Larry Rushville because he had something to ask. So, I’ve heard that he’s already done with his confession, so if we keep a close eye on them, it won’t be a big deal, so I let them see each other… and of course, they did it with permission.]

“But how could Chad do that? Did he have a weapon or something?”

[………where did he sneak, a pen…]

When the intimidated voice came out, Tim clicked his tongue and narrowed his eyebrows. Such a fool, we don’t really check anything like that! As he let out a nervous sigh, Tim spat out irritably.

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

When he crumpled his cell phone inside his pocket and lifted his head, he could see his partner putting down the sandwich with a slight regret at this situation. Jumping out of his seat as if urging Jude, Tim grabbed Jude’s arm.

“Let’s go, we need to see what’s going on.”

* * *

[-Is that angel… really you? Was it you?]

The voice was quiet and trembled faintly.

[I was just kidding, Chad. You know, huh? Didn’t I used to play pranks? I didn’t think you’d take it that seriously, I just…]

A terrible piercing sound rang. Like the window is being scratched with a piece of metal, Chad rushed at Larry like lightning. A pen stuck in Larry’s right eye, depriving the police on watch any time to scream in surprise.

[I won’t forgive you… I won’t… I don’t believe it, the angel should have been real! It was my everything, my wings, give me my wings ahhhhhhhh!]

[Kuk! Keuhulruk, keuk….]

Powerless to scream violently, Larry’s body fell back. When the police rushed in, Chad ran back to the corner holding a pen wet with blood and an unknown liquid.

[Chad, calm down! Put that down!]

[I’m over. I’m over. You know that. I don’t have anything left. I’ll keep doing this…]

[Chad!]

[Give me wings…]

Tears flowed from Chad’s eyes, as he muttered in a worn out tone. As the police approached carefully, Chad raised his dry hand. And in his eyes, where there’s a strange gleam resembling that of a praying mantis, a dull-looking pen poked into it relentlessly. The unpleasant sound of mucus, and the splatter of bloody liquid, as if an outlet had been pulled out, Chad’s body broke down.

-Tak, Tim’s hand stopping the recording was rough. Jude, who was looking at the screen, shrugged his shoulders and looked at his partner, and Tim shook his head and opened his mouth.

“……now, what happens to this case?”

“Well… because they’re all dead. There’s nothing to prosecute. I think we just need to fill out the report and upload it. The cops over there are going to have to write a letter of apology and suffer a bit.”

“Darn it.”

Tim sighed deeply as he scratched his head with a rough touch. As if asking if he was okay, Jude reached out his hand and patted Tim on his shoulder. Without replying to the touch, Tim looked at the floor for a while and spat.

“Jude, let’s go for a drink.”

It was a model answer for a detective in a troublesome case, and Jude did not object.

* * *