At 3:40 p.m., Kuroda placed three folders on the table and asked for the fourth to be removed.
The fourth bore Onda’s name.
Arai took it without argument and set it on the low cabinet, two meters from the others. That gesture would have been impossible at the start of the case. Not physically. Mentally. He would have felt he was moving away the piece that explained everything.
On the table remained the Sera file, the forensic report, and the Akamori access chain.
“Hoshino is challenging our use of the end of the confession,” Kuroda said. “From the moment you tell him the dressing wasn’t public knowledge, she considers everything he says afterward potentially contaminated by what he understands of our investigation.”
Sakamoto opened the transcript.
“Eleven nineteen.”
“Yes. Everything before that retains its own provenance. Everything after it needs independent corroboration if we want to use it.”
Arai looked at the pages.
Sera had already admitted entering the annex, copying the key, taking the phone, pushing with the satchel, and the fall before the word *dressing* changed status between them. After 11:19 came mostly his panic, his justification, and some of what he said he had been thinking.
“We can live without it,” Arai said.
Kuroda looked up.
“It isn’t a question of comfort.”
“I know. I mean the chain holds without that part.”
He drew the forensic report closer. The shoulder wound was consistent with an initial impact. The head injury with a fall. Sera’s searches after leaving documented his awareness of a risk. The parking record placed his vehicle nearby. The key was in his toolbox. The satchel carried paint consistent with the staircase. The Kiyose binder had been found in his possession. The Blind Spot package and **angles.txt** existed before the body was discovered.
None of those facts required a remembered murder.
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.