Psycho-Pass Utopia Hound Chapter 2 « The Genesis of a Second Case — Inspector Kougami Shinya » Part 1
Hello everybody ! It has been a while ^^;
Here is the continuation of KKS adventures ! Enjoy !
Again, a corpse was found.
The current crime scene was the park located in Yoyogi (1), in Shibuya ward (2), three days after the corpse discovered at the sports gym tennis court.
The three of Kougami, Masaoka and Kurata headed there.
There was no progress in the "puzzle corpse murder". In the end, the fact that the security system of the sports gym had been cracked had become a huge hindrance. Even the investigation to track the code fingerprints analyzed by Maru ended in failure. Moving forward to the next corpse with no progress in the previous case … this was an annoying situation for the CID.
A sculpture by an artist officially authorized by Sybil decorated with holograms was exhibited outdoor in that park in Yoyogi. It was an abstract sculpture, made of square blocks combined together. A cleaning drone had discovered the corpse of a human stuffing tightly the sculpture interstices.
"Could it be the same criminal as the one of the tennis court…?"
Kurata asked in a weary tone.
Kougami nodded,
"The method is different but… I have a hunch there is a common point in this singularity.”
Once the crime scene had been sealed off, the identification operations started by means of drones and micro robots. It was difficult to recognize because it had not kept its shape of human body, but that thing stuffing the sculpture was the body of "an entire person". They checked the records of the street scanners on the spot, but there was no suspicious hue. The body was immediately sent to the analysis laboratory, and Kougami and his team went back to the Public Safety Bureau.
"The victim is Endou Seiji. Occupation: athlete with a built-up physique, again. So, can we conclude that these are serial murders?" Maru said.
Public Safety Bureau analysis lab.
"The appearance is surely different from the one of the tennis court, but the cause of death is the same. He was killed by the injection of a muscle relaxant drug and then mutilated,"
Maru went on.
"The current corpse was dismantled with a laser scalpel for surgical use. The criminal shaped Endou's body into cubes with sides from 4 to 5 centimeters … what we call a cut into regular hexahedra. Because he used a laser, the wounds have been cauterized and the bleeding limited. All the cut parts of the human body have been meticulously vacuum-packed. These vacuum-packs are the same used in the tennis court. It sure is an unbelievable deviant."
"Is that so…?"
Kougami tilted his head.
"There is no mistake in thinking that it's abnormal, but the matter can’t be settled just by saying that the criminal is a deviant."
"What does that mean?" Kurata asked.
"Deviants are a bunch of people who kill only to satisfy their tastes and their views of the world, aren't they? As long as we look at the past records, the crimes of these guys are sloppy. Moreover, under the Sybil System’s management, they are isolated at the stage where those deviances arise. This time, the criminal is AS METICULOUS AS A LITTLE NERVOUS (3). The way he mutilated the corpse, and then the way he got rid of it. None of them show the impatience you can feel after killing a man"
"I agree with the Inspector," Masaoka said. "A methodical criminal. There is also the intelligence of not leaving evidence on the crime scene."
"By taking this kind of things into account, can we say he is a deviant?" Kurata wasn’t convinced yet.
"There are guys who are so stupid that they look like deviants, and guys who are so intelligent that look like deviants.
The matter is that we shouldn't confuse these two types," Kougami said in teaching tone.
"Haa…" There still was discontent on Kurata's face.
"There are three mysteries we need to solve," Kougami counted raising his fingers. "One, the criminal’s motive. Why does he aim at athletes with built up physiques? Two, why has he mutilated the corpses? Since this operation took his time up to this point, the criminal must have had a reason ‘I absolutely have to mutilate them’. Three, what about the criminal’s hue and crime coefficient? Why isn’t he detected by the street scanners?"
Maru displayed the personal information about the victim, Endou Seiji, on the hologram monitor.
"An athlete with a built up physique... his discipline was swimming. Freestyle, huh? He belonged to the publicity department of a company that develops and sells sports goods, the « Artemis ». I heard that « Artemis » publicity department has a large number of athletes, and they obtain good results in competitions in the whole Japan..."
Kurata leant forwards while peeping at the monitor.
"When was he killed?"
"The last time Endou was recorded by a street scanner was yesterday at 10 pm," Maru answered. "Then, the corpse has been discovered this morning at 5 am. He was killed in between. This also coincides with the presumed time of death. Of course, there is no trace of someone with a clouded hue approaching Endou in any record. Right now, Waku is getting information at Artemis, accompanied by Torii and Amari. However, it looks like there is no result so far…”
Torii and Amari. Both are female Enforcers of Division 3.
"Isn't there some common ground with the tennis court case?" Kougami asked.
"common ground?"
"For instance, Endou might have gone to the sports gym in Setagaya too, or something like that."
"Aah, that kind of things, huh? I'll try to follow his movements on the street scanners."
Maru maneuvered the console. The information on the monitor was rearranged.
"There is a record showing that Endou frequented the sports gym in Setagaya too. At that time, his counsellor in charge was…"
"Oribe Roma," Kougami said, anticipating.
"Isn't it a suspicious thing?" Masaoka said.
"But his hue was clear," Kurata added.
"We will go to listen to what Oribe has to say once more," Kougami turned on his heel. "Then, we will aim the dominator at him. We might find out something if we precisely measure his crime coefficient."
Of course, the act of pointing a dominator at an ordinary citizen must be carefully carried out. The target is likely to experience a serious stress. However, if the Inspector acknowledges that it's necessary for the investigation, pointing a gun at someone for the sole reason that he is "suspicious" is allowed. Even if an Enforcer draws his dominator in the street, there is a flexibility that lets it under the responsibility of the supervising Inspector.
NOTES TO TRANSLATION:
(1) Yoyogi Park is the fourth largest urban park in Tokyo. It is the one where the Olympic Games were held in 1964. We had troubles translating it, because in the original version, the author doesn’t call it “Yoyogi Park”, but “the/a park situated in Yoyogi”. To this day, there is only one park in Yoyogi, which is the famous Yoyogi Park. So why does the author speak of it as if it were some random park in Yoyogi... Perhaps is because we don’t know if Tokyo will stay the same 100 years from now?
(2) Shibuya ward is a special ward in Tokyo, adjacent to Setagaya ward where the sports gym is situated in the story.
(3) These words are written with dots on the kanjis in the original version, to insist on their importance.
By @oishiipumpkinblue and @cleverwolfpoetry :)
