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Yeah, I'd suspect a rigor mortis trick here, most likely the classic "keep the heat on to keep the body warmer/make it look more freshly dead" trick you see a fair amount in whodunit puzzles, which implicates Ryouko pretty clearly. Other evidence for Ryouko: 1) She goes out of her way to talk about her ex-boyfriend acting irrationally/threatening to show up at her place, which really seems to be setting up for a story of her ex breaking into her place, finding Katsumi there, and murdering him; 2) The cause of death was a single blow to the back of the head, with very little blood. That suggests there was no struggle, which doesn't seem plausible if we have a crazed ex-boyfriend attacking Katsumi (who's specifically mentioned as athletic and who could presumably fight back), but seems completely plausible if he was ambushed by someone he trusted, like his girlfriend. Right now I'm trying to figure out what's going on with the locked-room bit. The first thought I had is that Ryouko deliberately "forgot" to lock her door at first, to set up for the story of the intruder, but how does that jibe with being caught and having to actually lock it? Could an accomplice have entered the apartment some other way and unlocked it from the inside, or did she just fake locking the door in a way that her friends didn't spot? Or quickly unlock it during her key-jiggling, then claim it was unlocked all along? That may actually be the most plausible idea; it'd be trivial to hide real unlocking in a flurry of "confused" redundant unlocking, and it'd explain why she went out of her way to invite her friends back to her apartment, since it lets her stage the entire body-finding sequence (surprise at the door being unlocked, then surprise at the corpse) with witnesses who can also testify towards her being gone for days beforehand.
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Jun 7, 2017 10:46
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Right now, what I'm wondering about most is whether Katsumi even had a key to Ryouko's apartment, let alone a reason he would have been there during her vacation. If he had an altercation with Tadakoro or Kazumi, why would it have been there? The other problem that comes to mind is that Tadakoro's potential motive is wanting to date Ryouko again -- so if that was his goal, why would he leave the corpse in her apartment and thus implicate her in the murder? The only thing that fits is that he had no other options, not having a car, but even then the event chain relies on Katsumi coincidentally being at Ryouko's apartment when Tadakoro comes by to talk to her, the two coming to blows (rather light blows given the lack of other wounds), Katsumi being killed by deliberate or accidental head trauma, and Tadakoro fleeing the scene and letting God sort it out. That's possible, certainly, but it's not really narratively satisfying, and it still requires proof that Katsumi both had access to the apartment and reason to be there, as well as a motive to let Tadakoro in in the first place. Kazumi might want to frame Ryouko, but she doesn't have the means to do a corpse-dump on her own unless Tadakoro actually still has an apartment key and she steals it. That puts together a pretty implausible chain of events: Kazumi finding Katsumi and managing to ambush-kill him with a single blow to the head, then waiting several days before transporting his body (on her own, leaving no evidence or witnesses, which seems difficult even given that Ryouko's apartment is on the ground floor) to Ryouko's apartment and using Tadakoro's key to dump it there... all for the motive of framing Ryouko, who doesn't even seem inclined to take Tadakoro back and has even less motive to do so with her boyfriend alive? And she knows the dates of Ryouko's vacation so as to pull off this plan? Less plausible mysteries have been written, sure, but this doesn't fit together. Really, I still feel like Katsumi being killed by Ryouko, either deliberately or accidentally (she shoves him and he hits the back of his head on a shelf, perhaps?), and her formulating the "fake unlocked apartment" plan on the fly is the most plausible answer, since it doesn't involve a lot of coincidental meetings or excessive knowledge of Ryouko/Katsumi's schedules by people who don't know him. We still need more facts, though. EDIT: Two theories for the origin of the late-night thump, assuming it's important: 1) Katsumi being knocked into the wall and presumably killed by his head hitting a shelf. Would suggest an altercation with Tadakoro, although it still isn't clear why Katsumi was there at 2 AM. (Tadakoro being there at 2 AM -- well, dude sounds like a creepy guy, I can suspend disbelief there.) 2) Katsumi's body being dumped against the floor/wall of the apartment, presumably by Kazumi. It'd explain a lack of witnesses, but it wouldn't explain why Kazumi would later return to the complex in broad daylight, two days later, and link herself to her crime for no good reason. Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jun 18, 2017 |
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Jun 18, 2017 07:17
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juicedup posted:Tsukasa theorized that Kazumi DID NOT know about her vacation, therefore making her get found out. Ryouko being gone for so long gives her a seemingly perfect alibi. Right, but if she didn't know the apartment was unoccupied, why would she attempt to use it for a frame job? Dumping the body in Ryouko's apartment if Ryouko is actually there is way too risky. I mean, it's possible the character was taking an insane risk, but I tend to think about mystery plots like this as if the characters are rational actors. I suppose it's possible that Kazumi could have a situation like I speculated on for Tadakoro -- went over to Ryouko's to talk to/confront her, found Katsumi instead, got into an altercation and accidentally or deliberately killed him, fled -- but what would her motive be for getting into a violent altercation with Katsumi, and why would she go back on the 13th knowing she'd left a corpse there days earlier? (Also, mystery writers: in future, please do not introduce characters named "Kazumi" and "Katsumi" into the same story, tia)
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Jun 18, 2017 21:10
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I agree that the case really isn't solvable at this point, but what first came to mind for me is the spilled beer, which suggests someone was up during the night in Chiemi's room. (If there's some way Tsukasa might have knocked it over in her sleep, people who know more about kotatsu-sleeping, feel free to correct me.) Chiemi's "sloppy drunk" act is so heavy that I'm wondering if it's all a setup to alibi herself. Here's how I can see it going, broken down into bullet points, because it was getting long in paragraph form: 1. Chiemi has Tsukasa go out drinking with her. This is a regular occurrence, so Tsukasa expects Chiemi to get crazy drunk; instead, Chiemi moderates her consumption some and acts a lot drunker than she is. (It's easy enough to fool people that you're acting like they expect you to act, after all, and I'm guessing Chiemi has reasonable alcohol tolerance given that she's mentioned as tall and athletic and is also a fairly serious drinker, so she could probably still drink a fair bit for appearance's sake.) 2. Chiemi fakes sloppy drunkenness all the way home, particularly in her dormitory, so multiple witnesses will state that she was extremely drunk and conspicuously uncoordinated (falling against the wall, having to be supported by Tsukasa, etc.) 3. Chiemi has Tsukasa stay the night, to create an alibi, and fakes deep chainsaw-snoring sleep until Tsukasa is asleep herself. She then sneaks out of the room, inadvertently knocking over the can of beer that Tsukasa left on the kotatsu and that Chiemi presumably couldn't see in the dark. 4. Chiemi puts on rubber gloves, grabs a kitchen knife, and stabs Shinobu from behind. This may have been in the kitchen, or the body may have been moved; this is the part of the case that's the least clear right now. However it happens, Chiemi kills Shinobu, leaves the body in the kitchen, and disposes of evidence (and maybe a red herring? I'm not buying the "dying message" thing, especially from someone who got stabbed in the back). Presumably the rest of the dorm is asleep at this point, if the murder occurred between midnight and 1:00. 5. Chiemi goes back to her room, where Tsukasa is still asleep, and falls asleep herself for real this time. Tsukasa wakes up, finds Chiemi asleep, and assumes she slept through the night. This gives Chiemi two dimensions to her alibi: one, that at the time of the murder she was sloppily drunk and unable to walk under her own power, let alone kill someone and possibly move a body; two, that a friend spent the night in her room and can verify that she was asleep all night. The spilled beer, though, suggests that someone was awake in that room during the night, and Chiemi is the one who wouldn't have known it was there to stumble into and knock over.
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Jul 15, 2017 11:19
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I feel like we really need to see the highlighted facts here, just because it'll give us something to focus on. Right now I feel like it's hard to divide the big pile of facts we've been given (everyone's shaky-rear end alibis, the almost-certainly-nonexistent "dying message," the entire marionette bus accident... thing?) into "relevant and important" and "red herring," and there's not much to even start with there.
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Jul 19, 2017 03:28
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