That means guys protected by either the Juvenile Act or the Penal Code
died in succession. It's as if someone's inflicting
divine punishment. All three were
-apprehended by the same investigator. -Are you saying that this
former police officer's involved in the three deaths?
Don't tell me you're suspecting me of
inflicting capital punishment on those three in place of the legal system.
I do suspect that.
The suspect is Yamabe Kenichi, wanted for murder-burglary.
His present location is Yasatomachi, Iwatani.
He is believed to be hiding out at his parents' house.
All units in the area are to rush there immediately.
Iwatani No. 1 proceeding from Kita-Tsuchiura.
Hey.
You don't know what that perverted bastard Yamabe might do.
Be careful.
Got it.
-Nakamura, Inoue. -Yes.
-Go up. -Yes.
-Suzuki. -Yes.
That bastard...
he went and killed his own mother.
-Hey. -Yes.
Must be Kurata.
Kurata.
If you pull that trigger, he's gone with one shot.
As a general rule, don't you think capital punishment should apply if you kill one person?
Huh?
Take him away.
If you borrow money, you pay it back with interest, right?
But you can't do that if you take someone's life.
Then shouldn't you at least pay back the principal?
So guy who kills should be killed
and call it even?
That's what I'm saying.
You got something on your face.
Good job~. The prefectural police notified us too.
Sounds like it was a pretty nasty case.
-Yes. -Huh?
Ahh~ I have a feeling tonight's booze ain't gonna taste too good.
Something happen?
I was just thinking about a guy in the police who looks like
he could commit murder. That is, what you might say,
a guy who's willing to kill someone.
-Huh? What are you talking about? -G'night.
Kurata Shunin, your wife's on the phone.
Hello.
Hello?
What is it? I told you not to call me at work.
It’s not that. Hideki…
-What about Hideki? -He...
killed someone.
Good morning, Kurata-san.
I’ll take your place so go ahead and wrap it up.
See you tomorrow.
Kurata Hideki still doesn’t want to see you.
Is that right.
Has his father come to visit him?
No, he hasn’t been here.
When will Kurata Hideki be released?
It should be soon, but it's not definite yet.
I see.
He readily admitted to the crime.
That he lost it when she started talking about breaking up.
How did this happen?
You're with him all time. Didn’t you notice anything?
-Dear. -I
raised him with strict discipline.
But what the hell were you doing!
I can't believe he did it. He's a thoughtful boy.
-He's not the kind of boy who can kill someone...
What if he did!
He already killed someone.
Move, move!
Let me through.
Move it. Let's go.
I just took revenge for my daughter. Bring me back Ayaka.
Bring Ayaka back to me!
You killed them to drive yourself
-into a corner. -To drive myself into a corner?
What for?
So that you don't waver in your resolve.
The resolve to punish your son, Kurata Hideki, with your own hands.
All you do is walk outside the wall.
That's because if you see Hideki-kun even once,
you'll end up forgiving him.
If you see any hope that Hideki-kun might reform,
your resolve to punish him with your own hands will waver.
-Shunin went out again, huh? -Yeah.
Outside that wall again?
She's like obsessed with it, isn't she?
What did I do, damn it.
What are you fighting with?
Nothing.
People who really mean nothing don't sigh like that.
Hey, how do you get emoticons to appear?
Emoticons?
"Please come home." Did your wife run away from home?
Would I be this worried for my wife?
Then who's the runaway?
-My older daughter. -The one in middle school?
-Yeah. -Why did she
-run away from home? -At the parent/student/teacher meeting,
she said she wanted to follow my footsteps and be a police officer, so
I told her absolutely not.
Then she took off to her grandma's
-and won't come home. -Why won't you let her be
-a police officer? -I think that's great.
-It's proof she respects her dad. -No way. It's too dangerous.
As a father, I can't allow my daughter to place herself in dangerous situations.
You say dangerous, but Shunin's father is allowing her do it.
My daughter and Shunin are different types.
Besides, I'm sure Shunin's parents
are worried, just like me.
-When it comes to their kids, parents... -I'm back.
-Welcome back. -Shunin, were you at the wall again?
I still didn't get to see Kurata's son.
Is it really possible that a former assistant inspector is going around
-killing criminals? -I'm convinced it is.
A former assistant inspector would be familiar with
ways to kill without making it look like homicide.
For example, in Azuma's case.
Did he strangle him on the carotid artery to make him faint
and throw him on the road.
Shunin,
-that was close. -And
-he pushed Yasui off the rooftop. -In Ooba's case,
he could have intravenously injected fatal dosage of stimulant drug.
I have to see Hideki somehow.
He may know of something to make Kurata change his mind.
I find it hard to believe.
That he'd kill other criminals so that his resolve to
to kill his son won't waver. I can't believe there's a parent like that.
Nori.
Yes.
Parents break too. They break because they're parents.
"As a general rule, don't you think capital punishment should apply if you kill one person,"
he said.
You and Kurata have the same eyes.
Are you alright, Shunin?
How much longer are you going to pursue Kurata Shuji?
Recently you've been going to see
Kurata Hideki not only when you're on standby, but on your days off too.
Katsumata told me that Kurata and I are the same.
I'm different from Kurata.
If you're trying to protect Hideki to prove your point,
-I think you're wrong. -I'm not...
Besides, do you really think you can protect him all the way?
-I'll protect him. -You can't guard
Hideki 24 hours a day.
Some things are impossible, even for you.
I know that. I know.
Sensei, you were the defense attorney for Kurata Hideki, weren't you?
Yes.
Why, may I ask, is Headquarters' Assistant Inspector here?
I have a need to see Kurata Hideki.
But he won't see me.
Have you met Kurata Hideki's father?
Yes, he was a very strict father.
He told me not to do anything to lighten his sentence.
To be honest, I was surprised.
He never came to observe the trial either.
Hideki-kun didn't say much during interrogation
out of consideration for his father. That's what I think.
What do you mean by that?
Due to the fact that he killed Ayaka-san who showed no sign of resistance,
the prosecution demanded a heavy sentence.
Hideki-kun didn't say a word of rebuttal.
However, I still think Hideki-kun knew that his father
was wanting him to be punished severely,
and knowing that, he made chose not to say anything
and accept the punishment.
Wash your hands at least.
Both you and Dad, I don't know
why you guys don't use a glass.
I wonder if
Dad ever wished he could kill me.
When that happened, and I was no longer a daughter he could be proud of.
What are you talking about.
There's no such thing as parent's unconditional love, huh? Parents are human too.
They have all kinds of feelings too and may
hate their children at times.
Reiko, did something happen?
Nothing happened.
You too, Mom.
Haven't you ever wished I was gone too?
I've never wished for such a thing!
Good night.
-Good morning. -Morning.
Are you sure we don't have to tell Shunin?
-Yeah. -But
-isn't it a matter of time? -It's alright. You too, Hayama...
Kikuta?
Kurata Hideki.
He'll be released sometime next week.
I'm going out.
Good morning. Oh, Shunin and everyone,
sorry for troubling you all about my daughter.
Your daughter came home?
Yes, she did.
We talked all night.
We decided to take our time and deliberate about the future.
Tamotsu-san's daughter's lucky to have a dad like you.
-Do you think so? -No matter what happens,
you'd never wish your child was dead.
I'm surprised you found me here.
Like you said, the First Investigation Division has lots of free time.
I heard Hideki-kun will be released soon.
Have you changed your mind yet?
Since you killed three people to solidify your resolve,
I guess you can't easily turn back just because I exposed you.
What are you going to do after you kill your son?
Are you planning to die too?
-Did you bring evidence? -No, but we do know
that you went to the library Azuma was frequenting and found out that
he was pretending to be mentally incompetent.
You found out the other two guys were
likely to be repeat offenders too, right?
So you killed them in the name of justice.
Justice? Don't be ridiculous.
There's no justice or crap in murder. It's simply a matter of choice.
Whether you choose to deal with it with murder or not.
That's all.
Choice?
It means the reason to kill and the desire to kill
are two completely separate entities.
There isn't a single worthy reason to kill someone.
Conversely, people can kill someone for
any trivial reason.
What's there is only one thing. It's nothing more than an opportunity to choose.
The same goes for my son.
Talks about breaking up are
a dime a dozen.
But he chose to kill.
And
the price of a person's death can only be paid by death.
As a parent, I thought I taught him that much at the very least.
Is that why you think your son should pay with his life too?
Are you dead set on punishing your son with your own hands?
It's all over if you commit murder even once.
It can't be determined with certainty if they'll be repeat offenders or not.
But murderous intent remains intact.
It continues to remain in the soul as an option.
I can't allow a son who carries that bomb in his heart to go free in society.
That's my last reasoning
as a former cop.
I can understand that murder is something
one chooses to do.
But the danger of murderous intent isn't just limited to
those who have already committed murder.
The majority of people live on, repressing that murderous intent.
At least, I do.
That's why, as a detective, I want to find a different solution from yours.
I'll do everything I can to protect Hideki-kun.
Without fail.
Chief, I have a request.
The case you told me to stop investigating the other day.
We identified the man believed to have killed Azuma, Ooba, and Yasui.
Himekawa, I already told you to stop investigating that case.
It's Kurata Shuji, a former assistant inspector.
This time, he's going to kill his own son.
-Kurata? -Yes. Former Assistant Inspector Kurata Shuji.
Please let us officially reinvestigate these three cases immediately.
Kurata's son will be released from prison next week.
If we can just find some eyewitnesses,
we can have Kurata Shuji detained when Hideki is released.
-Are you sure? -I met with Kurata.
I'm positive.
We have to do whatever we can to stop him from killing his son.
I'll give you one day today. Go find some evidence.
-Depending on that, I'll think about it. -Thank you very much.
Tamotsu-san, take Azuma. Kikuta, take Ooba.
Kouhei, make inquiries in the area of Yasui's scene.
We're going to solve this case.
-Yes. -I'll
go too.
Go with Kikuta.
Excuse me. Have you seen this man?
-No, I haven't. -Then
-how about this man? -I don't know.
Thank you very much.
Have you ever seen this man around here?
-I don't know. -Thank you.
We can't seem to find anything suspicious.
-Uh... -What?
I'm not 100 percent convinced that
we should be investigating under the circumstance.
However, her tenacity in persuading the Chief under this circumstance
was extraordinary, I thought.
Oh yeah?
The past 3 three months, when I observed Shunin
disregarding the fact that she's a woman like you said,
and I've come to acknowledge a lot of things about her.
That being said, I still don't think
a woman should be out in the field like this.
Let's go.
How did it go? Find anything?
No.
Come with me.
I came here with Kurata before.
When I first became chief,
he was the shunin in the next unit.
If it wasn't for that incident,
by now he would've been a much more successful
and competent detective than me.
Have you heard about his wife?
Yes. I heard she was killed
by the father of Shimada Ayaka-san who her son killed.
The father got a life sentence. Although it's still pending in appeals court.
-Himekawa. -Yes.
Did Kurata really do it?
What do you think, Chief?
For him, work was his life.
But he was robbed of his work and
on top of that, he even lost his beloved wife.
It would be unbearable for most people.
Yes.
He didn't
go to his wife's murder trial, not even once.
In fact,
he even refused to testify for the prosecution.
It was from that time. I couldn't
understand him anymore.
Kurata Shuji,
after coming to know
the victims of murder incidents like that of Ooba and Yasui,
knows all too well the pain and suffering of the victim's family.
Then Kurata unwittingly became a victim's family himself.
Perhaps Kurata Shuji chose to be the victim's family
rather than the offender's father.
You're convinced Kurata did it, right?
Kurata Shuji's sole purpose in life
is to kill his son and to die himself.
If I can at least find out if his son's reformed,
I think I may be able to stop Kurata Shuji.
Himekawa.
Yes.
Please tell Kurata Hideki that
I've come to convey his mother's last will.
Please.
Please wait.
Go in.
I'm Himekawa with MPD's First Investigation Division.
Thank you for agreeing to see me.
My boss Imaizumi told me that several days before
your mother died, she came to see him.
Even though your father
said not to plead for a lighter sentence, your mother
insisted there must have been an unusual circumstance
for you to do something like that.
She came to ask him to investigate more thoroughly.
Your mother was saying
she can't believe you'd kill Ayaka-chan just because she wanted to break up.
That you're not that of a person.
Your mother believed in you.
Is that all?
None of that matters to me.
Hideki-kun. I want to save your father.
Your father may be...
I'm sorry for coming so suddenly.
That's alright.
I'll get right to the point.
From what I understand, argument about breaking up
was the reason Kurata Hideki killed your daughter, but
did your daughter ever tell you anything about breaking up?
No.
Is there anything
that you remembered recently?
Finally,
I was able to go through Ayaka's belongings.
And...
Please wait.
It's my daughter's cell phone.
Thank you.
Is this
Kurata Hideki and your daughter?
Look at the call record.
Do you know this Ishizawa Takuto?
He's probably the son of the president of the company my husband worked for.
Please read this text.
Did Ayaka-san write this text?
It's a text she sent to her friend Tomomi-chan.
"If you don't go out with me, I'll have your dad fired."
Neither you nor your husband knew about this?
No.
Ayaka did tell me that she met Takuto-san when she went to
help out at the company's social event
and he asked her for her cell phone number there.
-Yukawa Tomomi-san? -Yes.
You were good friends with Shimada Ayaka-san, right?
Have a seat.
I took the liberty of reading the text
Ayaka-san sent to you. So Ayaka-san was being
pressed to go out with this Ishizawa Takuto before the incident?
Yes. That guy was abnormal. He'd lurk in front of the school
and when we went to karaoke he'd tag along without asking.
He was super creepy.
Before that incident, Ayaka was always in fear
and was constantly looking behind her.
Even if I just called out to her, she'd jump
and was startled.
She was frightened?
It's really unbelievable.
Ayaka really liked Hideki-kun.
Hideki-kun really cared for Ayaka too.
Find anything?
I looked for eyewitnesses at the scene
of Azuma's death, but I didn't find anyone.
Same with the area around the building Yasui jumped from.
How about why Yasui went to the rooftop?
That's still unknown too.
No one suspicious was seen around Ooba's scene as well.
However, we did confirm with the security company Kurata works for
that he was off on the days the three died.
About Shimada Ayaka who was killed by Hideki.
There's a guy who was stalking her.
-Who is it? -The son of the president of the company
Ayaka's father worked for, Ishizawa Takuto,
Yes. First Division, Kikuta speaking.
Kurata Hideki?
Thank you.
Hideki's release was moved up.
I'm going. Check out Ishizawa Takuto.
Something may surface.
Thank goodness.
Caught you in time.
Do you still want something?
That's...
-I came to take you home. -I'll take Hideki-kun home.
I'll go home with my father.
Please leave us alone.
That corner you never turned, you turned for the first time.
You came to take Hideki-kun home, right?
I can trust you, right?
-Yes, Himekawa. -It's Kikuta.
We got Ishizawa Takuto to confess.
He admitted that he stalked Shimada Ayaka
and eventually assaulted her.
Thanks, Kikuta.
Kawasaki in Kanagawa, please.
Please hurry.
Dad,
you...
want me to die, don't you?
Where's Hideki-kun?
Hideki-kun. Hideki-kun.
Hideki-kun!
Please come with me.
Please leave him as is to preserve the scene until crime lab gets here.
Why did you kill him?
I didn't do it.
I couldn't.
But
I knew what Hideki decided to do, but didn't stop him.
Are you satisfied?
You carried out your belief of
paying the price of life with life.
Did you even investigate Hideki-kun's incident?
What are you talking about.
Kurata-san,
do you know the company Ayaka-san's father, Shimada Katsuya-san, worked for?
It's a manufacturing plant for factory machine parts. What about it?
Have you ever met the president of that company?
Of course not.
Then you wouldn't know the son of that president either, right?
Shimada Ayaka-san was being pressured to go out with
Ishizawa Takuto, the son of the president of her father's workplace.
She was subjected to stalking, and
in the end, sexually assaulted.
What?
We have no way of knowing what transpired
before Hideki-kun stabbed Ayaka-san.
It was probably a secret just between Hideki-kun and Ayaka-san.
That's why Hideki-kun didn't say anything during interrogation.
But I can understand.
How Ayaka-san
got to the point where she wanted to die.
She couldn't forgive herself for what happened with Ishizawa Takuto,
but the fact that she still loved Hideki-kun
-was too painful and sad. -Hideki...
killed Ayaka-san because she asked him to?
This is all my speculation. But
that would explain why Ayaka-san didn't resist.
Thank you.
Why didn't he
say anything?
For Hideki-kun,
it was impossible to accept the fact that Ayaka-san was violated.
Both Hideki-kun and Ayaka-san
thought the only way to correct that mistake
was by dying. As if
everything would be reset if they died.
That's ridiculous.
I can see how Hideki-kun, who was raised by you, would think that way.
If you make one mistake, it's all over.
He must have had that strong sense of value.
But
only by living with all the pain and mistakes
can man get to a certain something
beyond all that.
-Who made the call? -I discovered him first.
He was already in this condition when I found him.
More than likely, it's suicide.
Alright. After we confirm the scene,
please tell us what happened.
Please don't think about finding relief for yourself.
I can't have you dying
until you suffer and suffer and
suffer it out.
Or else it doesn't make sense.
Hey.
I solved a big case and you got that glum look.
I shared valuable information with you
but you let Kurata's son die in vain, huh?
Oh well.
Both you and Kurata are probably happy you got your principal back.
But remember, Himekawa.
You owe me one.
No matter what kind of mistake you make,
you can start over.
I believe people have the strength to do so.